And because it’s launch week, we have another blog of the week: This time Parmenion’s excellent, broad-ranging book-blog.

Which, coincidentally, has reviewed Eagle in glowing terms, as outline below (are you seeing a pattern here?  Yes, I am utterly partisan.  I blame the failure of Greece to leave the EU.  Or something).

At any rate, it’s a magnificent blog and deserves a follow

Eagle of the Twelfth is not just Manda’s triumph, Demalion of Macedon is her triumph.

For those readers who are expecting a swords and sandals heroic ride with a Scarrow or Riches style swagger, its there, but expect also for the legion to finally be stripped back to its real warts and all self. Because Eagle of the Twelfth gives an expose on just why these men conquered the world, how they were so tough, why they fought so much as a unit and how they used that comradeship, that family of the eagle to survive  the cold the heat, the rain the hell of war, Life in the ancient world.

The cover of the book proudly states on a sticker, “as good as Conn Iggulden or your money back”, And I have to say Conn in the case of this book, I think Manda has you beat (well maybe not Wolf of the Plains) but Rome for Rome.

This book captures not just the epic scale of Rome’s legions, but its core, its heart, its soul, its very essence, what made the men tick.

This book is going right up there as one of my best for 2012 Very Highly recommended, not just for those who like Historical fiction, but for those whole love great fiction told by a great story teller.

 

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The King's Spy (Thomas Hill Trilogy 1)I’m on at panel at the Kelmarsh Festival of Historical Literature with Andrew Swanston on Sunday 15th July so when his debut novel, The King’s Spy, became available in uncorrected proof form, I fell on it and put everything else on the TBR pile to one side. And well worth it, too: this is an excellent first novel; entertaining, informative, revealing with well-drawn characters and an ever-twisting plot.  Full review below:

Summer: 1643.  England is at war with itself.  King Charles I has fled London for Oxford and is being pursued by the anti-royalist faction.   The country is consumed by bloodshed.  For Thomas Hill, a man of letters, quietly running his bookshop in the sleepy rural backwater of Romsey, the war is a rumour, not yet real.  But Thomas is a code-breaker, a mathematician of some serious skill and the King has need of his services.

Thomas is an engaging, bookish man. He abhors violence, but is pleasantly competent when the need arises.  He is a good maker and breaker of codes, and for those of us who don’t know the ins and outs of codebreaking, he’s good at explaining what he’s doing.   He encodes missives for the King, and decodes those that are captured from the enemy. Most of them are dull in the extreme; the outpourings of men who seek to prove their own worth.  But then a code arrives that stands out from the rest: it’s complex, subtle and doesn’t yield to the standard code-breaking techniques. It is, in fact,  a Vigenere cipher, a form of code that is 70 years old and has never been broken. He believes he can do it; and others agree – which is why he is harassed, bullied, assaulted and eventually framed for the murder of his old mentor: there is a traitor close to the king who will do whatever it takes to protect himself.

This is a book about codes, but it wraps itself neatly around the events of the English Civil War, and highlights the value of information, and of informants, in wars where both sides speak the same language, share the same culture and are fighting as bitterly as only former friends can.  There’s a love interest, which comes to a surprising conclusion, a sense of danger and of friendships formed and deepening and a scholarly insight into the destruction of Oxford by the Royalists to whom it had given succour.  At the end, the villain is neatly not-quite-removed, giving us the opportunity of  a second book.

All in all, this is a highly satisfying read. It’s not blood and thunder, although people who need a book to contain a battle before they’ll read it, will have their wish fulfilled. But this is about far more than battles; the interest is in the ciphers themselves, and the way they can change the course of history.   The book launches on the 2nd of August, although I’m reliably informed there will be copies for sale at Kelmarsh.  Come along and find one there: and have it signed by the man himself.

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Far be it for me to blow my own…

OK, the new book is nearly out, and is garnering some rather lovely reviews, so for those of you who aren’t on FB and Twitter and haven’t already seen it, the first one comes from ‘For Winter Nights’ (and summer days) which is a lovely, eclectic, smorgasbord collection of reviews from a lovely, eclectic etc selection of books. We share broadly similar tastes (with the exception of one or two historical novels she loves and I loathe, but the thing about being Chair of the HWA is that a) my reading pile has grown faster than GM maize and b) I am becoming a *lot* more selective about what I like.  Usually, I mention it here. If I’ve read it and I don’t mention it here, it’s because I didn’t like it.

But Kate not only liked Rome: The Eagle of the Twelfth, she got under its skin and truly understood it.  For a writer, there can be no greater gift.

So here, for your delectation and delight, For Winter Nights.

Excerpt below, click the link for the full gorgeousness…

This is the considerable and powerful achievement of this wonderful novel. M.C. Scott places us within the heart of a legionary, turning the legion inside out, and giving the reader an in depth insight into what being a legionary meant. We might be in history here – the reign of Nero – but nothing about its impact on Demalion, on his fellow legionaries or on the legion itself is predictable. It’s edge of the seat military historical fiction – we have as many battles as you would wish – combined with a realistic, naturalistic portrayal of a set of men in extraordinary circumstances, allowing themselves to be defined by their allegiance to their legion.

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HWA/EH Kelmarsh Festival of Historical Literature

30 April 2012 History

Dear all – we have a programme – at last… Only 3 months later than I’d hoped, but at least it’s done and this is it: Festival of Literary History: Programme 2012 Presented by the Historical Writers’ Association and English Heritage Saturday 14th July 2012 10.30 – 11.30 (last 5 minutes of each hour is [...]

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Review: ‘Ballad” by Maggie Stiefvater

19 April 2012 publishing

Those of you who are not writers will have to bear with me a moment.  Those of you who do make a living writing, will know what it is to hand in a book.  Before it, there are the weeks, possibly months, of lock-down, when your friends think you’ve given up on them, your partner [...]

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Review: Daughters of War by Hilary Green

15 April 2012 Miscellania

One test of a good historical novel is that it leaves the reader with a sense of time and place  – and of actual events – that spur further research or further reading in the era.  This is one of the reasons why it’s never a bad idea when two authors pick the same time [...]

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Do Less, Less Well

13 April 2012 finance/economics

It’s been a while since I last posted: life, ageing parent, deadlines, HWA admin… lots and lots of HWA admin and the odd dreaming course to teach. But I met a friend the other day and her story has to be told: she’s an Occupational Therapist and was taken on for a month by our [...]

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Review: ‘Pure’ by Julianna Baggott

10 April 2012 Reviews

I bought this book on the basis of a Tweet from a former editor – which has to be a first (tho’ probably not a last).  She said that ‘If you liked Hunger Games, you’ll love Pure by Julianna Baggott’ and while that’s almost certainly true  – with certain caveats below – you don’t have [...]

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Review: Honour and the Sword

11 March 2012 Reviews

One of the great joys of having set up the Historical Writers’ Association is that I am being sent a lot of books I wouldn’t otherwise read.  A great many recently have been entrants for the HWA/Goldsboro Prize for Debut Historical Fiction and for obvious reasons, I can’t review them here yet (when the winner [...]

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First Draft Done…

7 February 2012 catstuff

So… finished the first draft of Rome: The Art of War (book IV in the series).  It’s not done. It’s not ready to send to my editor for the real work of editing, but there are 116,000 words all more or less in the right order with the ideas in skeletal form. If I get [...]

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