Official Review: The Northumbrian Saga by A H Gray
Posted: 08 Mar 2014, 15:41
[Following is the official OnlineBookClub.org review of "The Northumbrian Saga" by A H Gray.]
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Before there was an England, a Scotland, or a Yorkshire, people lived, loved, and died in places with names that you may recognize: Humber, Clyde, Nottingham, Dublin, York. These people were not English; they belonged to small people groups that have been swallowed by time: Mercians, Anglians, Picts. Yet they were the English, of very long ago. Also English were the Danes who came to invade these lands. They too left their culture, their genes, and their words, such as skirt and sky.
If you like reading about these ancient peoples, you will like A.H. Gray’s book The Northumbrian Saga. It opens just before the Viking invasions changed England forever. We get to see the pure Anglo-Saxon culture: the lords drinking ale in their halls, the blond princesses with servant girls to braid their hair, the women who weave and embroider, the brooches and the torques. The names of the places and people alone will make you feel like you are reading Beowulf or The Lord of the Rings.
The story is told through the eyes of Aethelwin, a young girl who is the niece of King Osbert. Aethelwin’s position in the royal family gives her a front-row seat to the historical turmoil that is about to descend on Northumbria (now Northeastern England). When the story opens, Aethelwin is a bride at thirteen, a “peace-weaver” whose marriage is supposed to create an alliance between her husband’s family and her uncle’s. Aethelwin continues to be at or near the center of the action during the next fifteen years of her life. She does her best to advance her own and her family’s interests in the face of civil war and invasion.
Reading The Northumbrian Saga is a good way to get a painless education about the years between 862 and 878 in Northumbria. A.H. Gray seamlessly weaves into Aethelwin’s story accurate accounts of the battles, alliances, and ever-changing fortunes of the kings of Northumbria and the surrounding territories. Reading a paragraph or two about Alfred, or about how the Danes fared in Dublin, is never boring and never feels forced. It is always directly relevant to the story of Aethelwin. Her hopes and her divided loyalties rise and fall with the fortunes of these kings. Neither is it jarring when the narrative moves to talking about 800s Northumbrian politics. These passages come up very naturally, and in fact they are some of the best written in the book.
At its best, The Northumbrian Saga is similar to The Good Earth, that great literary classic by Pearl Buck. In the The Good Earth, we see everything from Wang Lung’s point of view and through his concerns, which are mostly very self-centered. Yet through his experience, we see a lot of the fate of China. We don’t always like Wang Lung, but he is a consistent character throughout and is a true product of his culture. The Northumbrian Saga is trying for a similar effect, and to a large extent achieves it.
However, in The Northumbrian Saga there are some serious problems that mar this effect. They have to do with the mechanics of dialogue and narrative.
First, the dialogue. With occasional exceptions, the characters sound like modern Americans. They do not use expressions, word order or turns of phrase that we would expect from people living in their place and time. Now, obviously, the whole book could not be written in Old English, and even Tolkien-style dialogue is not everyone’s cup of tea. There is a continuum here, and authors must come down somewhere on it. In The Northumbrian Saga, however, it seems that the author is barely aware of this issue. Characters will occasionally say something that sounds very Old-English, and then the next moment, we have an Anglo-Saxon princess saying something like, “Well, we’ll just have to agree to disagree then, won’t we?” For me, this is a serious breach of verisimilitude.
Again, with occasional exceptions, almost all the characters talk alike. Very few of the characters have a distinctive style of speech. Even the Danes, when speaking English, don’t have anything added to make them sound like non-native speakers.
Some readers will not mind this problem with the dialogue, but at the very least it is a missed opportunity. More carefully written dialogue could greatly enhance the degree to which the novel evokes the era in which it is set, and could also enhance the emotional impact of the characters themselves.
Then there is the narrative. It reads like a first draft, very flat and matter-of-fact, without much style or variation in sentence structure. Nor are there any stylistic clues given us to distinguish large, horrifying events from small, telling ones, or to give us much clue where the story is heading. Though the book is told from Aethelwin’s point of view, Aethelwin’s perceptions are not always reliable. This factor makes it all the more important that readers be given some stylistic cues to orient them. Readers need to be frightened and warned with foreshadowing, and consoled with restful, more poetic or descriptive passages. All this is mostly missing in The Northumbrian Saga.
Narrative like this makes it hard to trust the author. For me, it made the book a chore to read at times, even when I wanted to find out what would happen. The book would benefit from a rewrite.
Finally, I have some suggestions in case The Northumbrian Saga ever goes to a print version. (I only have the Kindle version, so I do not know whether TNS exists in print yet, or not.) First of all, a map of Northumbria, showing all the rivers and settlements mentioned in the book, would be extremely helpful. Nor would it be unwelcome if there were a second map showing all the regions of Britain at the time of the book’s action.
Secondly, this book desperately needs an editor. There are numerous typos, including whole words being left out. There are also many malapropisms that I hope are typos. Here are just a few, taken from a small section of the book: “the weather was unforgivable”; “two completely opposable people” (Opposable? Like a monkey’s thumbs?); and my favorite, “an inane, primal response of survival at any cost.” Issues like these make it hard to take the book seriously, and that is a shame, as it is very well-researched and has an excellent plot.
Because of these problems, and the problems with writing mechanics already mentioned, I am only able to give The Northumbrian Saga two out of four stars. As a first draft, I think it has promise. To achieve greatness, the author should hone her literary skills, or should team up with a skilled storyteller who can bring to life A.H. Gray’s amazing historical plots and can more fully evoke the atmosphere of the exciting time and place in which they are set. I have hopes that either of both of these things could happen, as this is just the first book in a planned series.
***
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If you like reading about these ancient peoples, you will like A.H. Gray’s book The Northumbrian Saga. It opens just before the Viking invasions changed England forever. We get to see the pure Anglo-Saxon culture: the lords drinking ale in their halls, the blond princesses with servant girls to braid their hair, the women who weave and embroider, the brooches and the torques. The names of the places and people alone will make you feel like you are reading Beowulf or The Lord of the Rings.
The story is told through the eyes of Aethelwin, a young girl who is the niece of King Osbert. Aethelwin’s position in the royal family gives her a front-row seat to the historical turmoil that is about to descend on Northumbria (now Northeastern England). When the story opens, Aethelwin is a bride at thirteen, a “peace-weaver” whose marriage is supposed to create an alliance between her husband’s family and her uncle’s. Aethelwin continues to be at or near the center of the action during the next fifteen years of her life. She does her best to advance her own and her family’s interests in the face of civil war and invasion.
Reading The Northumbrian Saga is a good way to get a painless education about the years between 862 and 878 in Northumbria. A.H. Gray seamlessly weaves into Aethelwin’s story accurate accounts of the battles, alliances, and ever-changing fortunes of the kings of Northumbria and the surrounding territories. Reading a paragraph or two about Alfred, or about how the Danes fared in Dublin, is never boring and never feels forced. It is always directly relevant to the story of Aethelwin. Her hopes and her divided loyalties rise and fall with the fortunes of these kings. Neither is it jarring when the narrative moves to talking about 800s Northumbrian politics. These passages come up very naturally, and in fact they are some of the best written in the book.
At its best, The Northumbrian Saga is similar to The Good Earth, that great literary classic by Pearl Buck. In the The Good Earth, we see everything from Wang Lung’s point of view and through his concerns, which are mostly very self-centered. Yet through his experience, we see a lot of the fate of China. We don’t always like Wang Lung, but he is a consistent character throughout and is a true product of his culture. The Northumbrian Saga is trying for a similar effect, and to a large extent achieves it.
However, in The Northumbrian Saga there are some serious problems that mar this effect. They have to do with the mechanics of dialogue and narrative.
First, the dialogue. With occasional exceptions, the characters sound like modern Americans. They do not use expressions, word order or turns of phrase that we would expect from people living in their place and time. Now, obviously, the whole book could not be written in Old English, and even Tolkien-style dialogue is not everyone’s cup of tea. There is a continuum here, and authors must come down somewhere on it. In The Northumbrian Saga, however, it seems that the author is barely aware of this issue. Characters will occasionally say something that sounds very Old-English, and then the next moment, we have an Anglo-Saxon princess saying something like, “Well, we’ll just have to agree to disagree then, won’t we?” For me, this is a serious breach of verisimilitude.
Again, with occasional exceptions, almost all the characters talk alike. Very few of the characters have a distinctive style of speech. Even the Danes, when speaking English, don’t have anything added to make them sound like non-native speakers.
Some readers will not mind this problem with the dialogue, but at the very least it is a missed opportunity. More carefully written dialogue could greatly enhance the degree to which the novel evokes the era in which it is set, and could also enhance the emotional impact of the characters themselves.
Then there is the narrative. It reads like a first draft, very flat and matter-of-fact, without much style or variation in sentence structure. Nor are there any stylistic clues given us to distinguish large, horrifying events from small, telling ones, or to give us much clue where the story is heading. Though the book is told from Aethelwin’s point of view, Aethelwin’s perceptions are not always reliable. This factor makes it all the more important that readers be given some stylistic cues to orient them. Readers need to be frightened and warned with foreshadowing, and consoled with restful, more poetic or descriptive passages. All this is mostly missing in The Northumbrian Saga.
Narrative like this makes it hard to trust the author. For me, it made the book a chore to read at times, even when I wanted to find out what would happen. The book would benefit from a rewrite.
Finally, I have some suggestions in case The Northumbrian Saga ever goes to a print version. (I only have the Kindle version, so I do not know whether TNS exists in print yet, or not.) First of all, a map of Northumbria, showing all the rivers and settlements mentioned in the book, would be extremely helpful. Nor would it be unwelcome if there were a second map showing all the regions of Britain at the time of the book’s action.
Secondly, this book desperately needs an editor. There are numerous typos, including whole words being left out. There are also many malapropisms that I hope are typos. Here are just a few, taken from a small section of the book: “the weather was unforgivable”; “two completely opposable people” (Opposable? Like a monkey’s thumbs?); and my favorite, “an inane, primal response of survival at any cost.” Issues like these make it hard to take the book seriously, and that is a shame, as it is very well-researched and has an excellent plot.
Because of these problems, and the problems with writing mechanics already mentioned, I am only able to give The Northumbrian Saga two out of four stars. As a first draft, I think it has promise. To achieve greatness, the author should hone her literary skills, or should team up with a skilled storyteller who can bring to life A.H. Gray’s amazing historical plots and can more fully evoke the atmosphere of the exciting time and place in which they are set. I have hopes that either of both of these things could happen, as this is just the first book in a planned series.
***
Buy "The Northumbrian Saga" on Amazon