This book is a fictional story about the great Iron Age warrior queen who many of us call Boadicea. However, Manda Scott has supported her tale with amazingly detailed and accurate research about the cognitive reality for Boudica's tribe, the Iceni, whose ceremonial enclosure was at Thetford, Norfolk, at the time that the Romans were slowly taking over the British Isles.
A pivotal point of this page-turner of a story is that shamans (Druids) were still highly revered in those days, and they used their powers to try to protect the tribes. And so we are plunged into a world of magic and spirits as we follow the young Boudica through her shamanic initiatory training on the Isle of Mona (Anglesey) and learn how she developed the courage to stand alone "at the tip of the spear" - a basic requirement for any successful leader.
Of course, there is no proof that she had this training in the historical records, but it might explain why she and her warriors managed to cut such a swathe through the Roman-held territory and become a real problem for them.
Research shows that, with the smoking ruins of three large Roman settlements behind her, she followed solistice alignments along the straight tracks into and through London.
Graham Robb writes in The Ancient Paths:
"The solstice line from Camulodunum [Colchester] exactly bisects the capital of the London Basin. Passing to the south of Greenwich Park, the line continues to the solar intersection and a Roman road junction at the foot of Blythe Hill Fields in Lewisham. From the top of the hill, the scouts of Boudica's army would have looked down towards the merchant ships and barges, and the new Roman homes on the north bank of the Thames. They now turned to follow the trajectory of one of the Four Royal Roads of Britain - the road later known as Watling Street [named after Waten aka Woden].
"Along that ancient path protected by the gods, they slaughtered their way into Londinium ... following the solstice line exactly between Blackfriars Bridge and Waterloo Bridge ... their route would have taken them by Russell Square and Euston Station (not the neighbouring King's Cross, where local legend places the grave of Boudica) then over Hampstead Heath and along the Great North Way to the next Roman town to be destroyed, Verulamium (St Albans)."
Dreaming the Eagle is the first part of a trilogy that goes on in books 2 and 3 to deal with those battles. I must confess that I haven't yet had the time to read those two. My main fascination with this first book were the details about her shamanic training, which ring true to me.
- Format: Kindle Edition
- File Size: 3944 KB
- Print Length: 738 pages
- Publisher: Transworld Digital; New Ed edition (11 Jun. 2010)
- Sold by: Amazon Media EU S.à r.l.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B003R0KYXI
- Text-to-Speech:
Enabled
- Word Wise: Enabled
- Customer Reviews: 173 customer reviews
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
#2,941 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #50 in Historical European Fiction
- #15 in Science Fiction Alternate History
- #12 in Alternative History
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