Hild

Hardcover, 546 pages

Published 2013 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

ISBN:
978-0-374-28087-1
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OCLC Number:
827256692

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4 stars (1 review)

"A brilliant, lush, sweeping historical novel about the rise of the most powerful woman of the Middle Ages: Hild Hild is born into a world in transition. In seventh-century Britain, small kingdoms are merging, usually violently. A new religion is coming ashore; the old gods' priests are worrying. Edwin of Northumbria plots to become overking of the Angles, ruthlessly using every tool at his disposal: blood, bribery, belief. Hild is the king's youngest niece. She has the powerful curiosity of a bright child, a will of adamant, and a way of seeing the world--of studying nature, of matching cause with effect, of observing human nature and predicting what will happen next--that can seem uncanny, even supernatural, to those around her. She establishes herself as the king's seer. And she is indispensable--until she should ever lead the king astray. The stakes are life and death: for Hild, her family, her loved …

7 editions

Hild

4 stars

4 stars: loved this book, would recommend

This was a reread but it's been a long time - I remembered almost nothing of it. It is a work of historical fiction about the very early years of a woman about whom very little is known but who eventually became a saint.

I feel like I had an easier time reading it the first time though - I spent a lot of time rereading pages and flipping back to try and figure out what was going on. I didn't have a lot of trouble with the Old English words sprinkled throughout, most were clear from context, doubly so if you've read a lot of fantasy, and I think helped disconnect them from words with more modern connotations (e.g. a gesith is not exactly a knight), and it helped a lot that I had just played an online game set in a …