The Breaking of Dawn (The Kingdom of Mercia, Book 1)
Jayne Castel maps a classic troubled love story onto a much broader canvas of war and political intrigue in the first of her “Kingdom of Mercia” series, The Breaking Dawn. A Mercian village girl in AD 641 watches her betrothed go off to join the fight against the rival kingdom of Northumbria, a fight that will culminate in the Battle of Maserfield recorded by the Venerable Bede.
The young woman, Merwenna, resolves to go looking for news of her beloved – and encounters the Welsh war-band leader Prince Cynddylan. Emotions stir between the two despite the impossibility of their circumstances, and Castel very skillfully weaves the story of their relationship into the larger-scale goings-on in her extremely well-researched and multi-faceted narrative.
Both aspects of this book kept me eagerly reading, and I look forward to future installments in the series.
