Morgan Llywelyn

I was gripped by the first three-quarters of ‘Druid’ but found the final quarter patchy.

The early and middle parts of the book revolve around the main character Ainvar who narrates the story. We first meet him as a fifteen-year-old fascinated by Druidry. He becomes an apprentice Druid. His learning journey, which includes interaction with other characters, makes for engaging reading.

The only criticism I have for the first 75 per cent of the story is that time’s passing isn’t as show more apparent as it should be. As mentioned, Ainvar is introduced as a fifteen-year-old, and at a stage where I imagined him to be eighteen or nineteen, I discovered he’s twenty-nine.

Other than that, I enjoyed Ainvar’s relationships with other characters and the interwoven storylines, which includes a secretive journey into Roman territory.

While the novel’s last section has some good moments, it’s largely bogged down with static descriptions of battles and people discussing future battles. Many times, it reads like a history book, not a novel. The first-person voice is lost to dry descriptions of events that Ainvar took no part in, making it sound like an out-of-place third-person narrative.

He’ll say, ‘I found out later …’ and such like, when much of the info isn’t necessary. It would’ve been more suspenseful if the author had kept it linear and therefore kept Ainvar in the dark as events unfolded. Events that were relevant to the plot could’ve been made more vivid if a scout or a messenger or a spy brought news and told Ainvar first-hand what happened.

Battles in stories can be exciting if you’re following one or more of the main characters as they take to the field. You see events transpire through their eyes as it’s happening. In this case, Ainvar tells the reader what happened in the driest terms, draining the battles of all excitement.

Without giving away any spoilers, a more personal line of conflict for Ainvar occurs in the book’s last quarter, which isn’t pursued. I kept waiting for this thread to be picked up, as it offered much more suspense and excitement than the dry textbook descriptions of battles, but nothing came of it.

In short, the first 75 per cent of the story is engaging, and at times engrossing, while the final 25 per cent is mostly a struggle to get through. I’m certainly interested in reading the sequel, plus some of the author’s other books. show less

I can never get enough of reading about Cuchulain. I guess it’s the Gael in me. I’ve probably read five or six versions of the Táin Bó Cualnge and the Cuchullain cycle in various Myths & Legends textbooks and novelizations. I still have a couple more waiting on my shelves with Ciaran Carson’s The Tain and Lady Gregory’s account from the early 20th century. And I’ll probably buy the next one I see on a shelf in the bookstore.

Leave it to Morgan Llywelyn to put together the most show more cohesive and readable version to date. Since the epic cycle that forms the basis of the Cuchullain stories are fragmented and episodic, it’s nice the way she pulled it together and created one of her trademark masterpieces of historical fiction. I’ve enjoyed her books on other legends from ancient Ireland like Brian Boru and Finn MacCool, as well as her modern series covering the Irish Rebellion in 1916 through the present.

“Good health to the giver and the blessings of whatever god you follow” to Morgan for bringing me more tales from one of my ancestral lands. show less

I first read this book over a decade ago. Even though it has been a long time since I was last in sixteenth century Ireland, this book left an impression on me. Grania's bravado, her cunning, and her passion have lingered. Unable to banish them, I finally revisited this book, and I remembered why this book made such a big impact with me.

Llywelyn follows the story of Grania's life. For the most part, it happens in chronological order, starting from near the end of her first marriage to Donal show more O'Flaherty, but there are some dips into the past, but this only enhances the story and the characters, never disrupting the flow. As any real person is, Grania was a complex figure. Sure, she was intelligent, brave, charismatic, and daring. But she was also brash, vindictive, quick to anger, and unforgiving. A lot of her decisions are made for the good of her people, but she sometimes acts in ways that is detrimental to them. She loves her children, but she has a hard time showing it because they are so different from her yet so similar. She's not always likable or even relatable, but you can't help but love and admire her all the same. She lived in a rough time and was given a tough time of it. She did her best, even if it wasn't the best, but can any of us say that? Grania is human, for all her achievements, and that makes her fascinating to read about.

Overall, Grania just wants to be loved and accepted for who she is, which is all any of us really want. This extends from her father, who holds up her deceased mother as the ideal of womanhood, to her various lovers and husbands. Unfortunately, most of them only see a side of her, and like or hate her accordingly. Only Tigernan, a childhood friend who has stood by her side like a lovesick puppy, supports her almost unconditionally. He yearns for her throughout the book, but he never crosses over into "nice guy" territory, as it's clear he respects Grania and never wants to change her. If anything, he wants her to be the best that she can be. Their relationship is touching and rewarding through all of its iterations, and through it, readers witness Grania's vulnerabilities.

More towards the end, Llywelyn's prose takes on a more nonfiction or biographical tone, as she starts listing dates and summarizing events in the lead up to Grania's encounter with Queen Elizabeth I. This didn't bother me because I felt Grania's personality still shone through, coloring the pages with adventure and danger. There's never a dull moment.

Honestly, this book has everything: romance, high adventure, intrigue, action, daily life, and just a good dose of history. There's something in it for everyone. The only reason I think some people might not like this is because there are many scenes of sex in varying degrees of graphic-ness. That's not some people's cup of tea. Otherwise, it's a book about Ireland and the people who embodied its spirit during one of its most difficult eras. Thanks to them and Llywelyn, that spirit has endured to today. show less

I can't remember when I first heard about Grace O'Malley, but I first learned about her last year when my dad recommended I check out Grace, a new pub opening in New York's East Side. I took off to Wikipedia and a short but glorious flurry of research. Some time later, I saw this book at Free Book Day, picked it up, and realized I'd found a gem from my newest favorite imprint.

In case you can't tell, I'm totally biased. I love reading about golden age piracy, Elizabethan-Era history, strong show more women, lots of characters, and political challenges, so there was very little chance of me not liking this book. I'm happy to say that it lived up to my expectations.

I loved how Grania was set up against Queen Elizabeth throughout the book, how she built up a kind of parasocial relationship with the woman who was so like her and yet so alien. It was also refreshing to read Elizabeth from a less favorable vantage than I usually do--I'm inclined to hero worship, so it was good to have some solid reminders that the Spanish weren't the only ones who saw her as an enemy.

Ireland was richly described, the remnants of the brehon laws and customs well explained. The anthropologist in me delighted in the cultural explorations and clashes even as the pacifist in my cringed at the sheer destruction done to each other.

One of the strengths of this book could easily have been its weakness: it stretches across most of Grania's life, certainly all of her adult life. After one initial vivid scene on the high seas, much of the story is somewhat removed, with only a few intense battle scenes and encounters going into blow-by-blow detail. But it worked--much as I might want to read about those, I'm happy to look for them in another book. The story of Grania's ups and downs is long and varied and Llywelyn encompassed a great deal of it. It can be a challenge to make politics so engaging.

And the climactic scene when queen meets chieftain? I wanted it to go on and on!

One slightly odd thing was that I always felt a bit detached from the timeline. Dates were bandied about but I didn't always feel anchored in them. Much more time passed than I noticed, so that Grania seemed to age abruptly every now and then. This is probably just a quirk of my own, though.

My only great complaint about this book is that all but the last section are named for Grania's romantic interests. The whole story was about being free, having no equals, doing what she wanted to do, but it was trapped in the cage of her sexual exploits. Not that they weren't important, but...so were other things. The sections might have been named for the women in her life (her mother, Evleen, her daughter), for people important to her if not always romantically involved (her father, Evleen, Rauri Oge, a son), for the main places she lived or was politically involved with. It seems a shame that a woman who defied convention is, in this story, defined by who she was sleeping with (until she is too old to be considered desirable by most men, at which point a section is finally named for someone else).

Grania herself was so well done--brave to the point of foolishness, impulsive, learning from hard experience, never beaten down despite so much difficulty. Many of the characters were, even the ones who only stayed around a short while.

So yes, unsurprisingly I loved this book and highly recommend it to anyone interested in historical fiction, piracy, and the Elizabethan era.

No quotes this time because there were a lot of good lines and my cat is sitting on my lap, preventing me from holding a book open and typing at the same time. You'll just have to read this one for yourself. 8-) show less