Ripples Through Time
Christina Courtenay has honed her approach to dual-time romantic historical fiction with skill, making her novels in this style among the best in the genre.
Her latest novel, Ripples through Time, moves between West Mercia in the year AD 873, and present-day Herefordshire. Our protagonists in the past timeline are Merewen, destined for a Christian religious house; and Eirik, a young Norseman, jaded from years of combat and yearning to settle down. As Anglo-Saxon towns are threatened by the Heathen Army, their forbidden love grows. In the present timeline, Alix moves to Hereford to start a new life as a librarian. When a Viking hoard is discovered, the library plans an exhibition and Alix meets the local farmer, Noah, a young man on whose land the discovery was made. As the two relationships develop, echoes from the past reach across the centuries.
Courtenay handles the dual-timeline narrative well, and the idea of present-day characters haunted by a past life is engaging. The discovery of the Viking hoard gives a convincing connection to past times, and the recreation of West Mercia under threat of Viking raids is well done. The settings are also well described: the rugged terrain of 1st-century Britain contrasted with contemporary rural Herefordshire. The Neolithic cairn where the hoard was buried provides a resonance of even earlier times, a key symbol of continuity.
Aspects of the story will be familiar to fans of Courtenay’s books, and readers can rely here on another well-written contribution to the genre. The world Courtenay creates treads a fine line between historical authenticity and comforting romantic cosiness. There is violence, but it is never graphically described, and the romantic elements of the story are always strongest. Overall, for readers who enjoy romantic fiction with a sprinkling of well-researched historical facts, this is very successful.
