Manda Scott: Dreaming the Eagle

[bibliogramma]

Dreaming the Eagle is the first of Manda Scott's historical fantasy quartet based on the life of Boudica, leader of the Iceni - one of several British tribes that rebelled against Rome in the early years after the Claudian conquest.

Very little is known about Boudica, or indeed about any of the inhabitants of Britain prior to the Roman conquest, and most of what is known, come to us through the eyes of the victorious Romans, who looked at the British tribes and saw barbarians. Thus the writer who choses to tell stories of this time has a great deal of free rein to tell whatever story she wants.

I label this series specifically as fantasy not just because so much of the lives of the Iceni and other tribes is - as it must be - invention, but also because the author's interpretation of pre-Roman British spirituality plays a large role, at least in the one book I've read so far.

In Dreaming the Eagle, Scott gives us an imaginative and engaging story of the young woman warrior who will grow up to be, not just the leader of the Iceni, but the Warrior of Mona, a title in some ways akin in meaning to battlechief of the Britons, given to her by the dreamers (Scott's version of the Druids) of the Isle of Mona. We also follow her half-brother Ban, captured and sold into slavery by a traitor of the tribe of the Trinovantes, who, believing all his kin including Boudica (here named Breaca for the early part of her life) killed in the ambush in which he was taken, has given his allegiance to the Romans who gave him back his freedom.

The book ends after the first major encounter between the invading Romans and the British defenders, led by Boudica and her lover Caradoc, leader of the Ordovices. The British forces have retreated, and when Ban discovers on the battlefield the bodies of some he believed dead for years, including that of his own mother, he starts to realise that he has been lied to. But the suvivors among his own people still believe him dead at the hands of the now dead traitor Amminios - brother to Caradoc.

I'm looking forward to the next volume.