#WWWWednesday – 9th August 2023

WWWWednesdays

Hosted by Taking on a World of Words, this meme is all about the three Ws:

  • What are you currently reading?
  • What did you recently finish reading?
  • What do you think you’ll read next?

Why not join in too?  Leave a comment with your link at Taking on a World of Words and then go blog hopping!


Currently reading

The Seventh SonThe Seventh Son by Sebastian Faulks (eARC, Penguin)

A child will be born who will change everything

When young American academic Talissa Adam offers to carry another woman’s child, she has no idea of the life-changing consequences.

Behind the doors of the Parn Institute, a billionaire entrepreneur plans to stretch the boundaries of ethics as never before. Through a series of IVF treatments, which they hope to keep secret, they propose an experiment that will upend the human race as we know it.

Seth, the baby, is delivered to hopeful parents Mary and Alaric, but when his differences start to mark him out from his peers, he begins to attract unwanted attention.

A Fenland GardenA Fenland Garden by Frances Pryor (ebook, Head of Zeus via NetGalley)

A Fenland Garden is the story of the creation of a garden in a complex and fragile English landscape – the Fens of southern Lincolnshire – by a writer who has a very particular relationship with landscape and the soil, thanks to his distinguished career as an archaeologist and discoverer of some of England’s earliest field systems.

It describes the imagining, planning and building of a garden in an unfamiliar and sometimes hostile place, and the challenges, setbacks and joys these processes entail. This is a narrative of the making of a garden, but it is also about reclaiming a patch of ground for nature and wildlife – of repairing the damage done to a small slice of Fenland landscape by decades of intensive farming.

A Fenland Garden is informed by the empirical wisdom of a practising gardener (and archaeologist) and by his deep understanding of the soil, landscape and weather of the region; Francis’s account of the development of the garden is counterpointed by fascinating nuggets of Fenland lore and history, as well as by vignettes of the plantsman’s trials and tribulations as he works an exceptionally demanding plot of land. Above all, this is the story of bringing something beautiful into being; of embedding a garden in the local landscape; and thereby of deepening and broadening the idea of home.

TreasonTreason by James Jackson (Zaffre)

Behind the famous rhyme lies a murderous conspiracy that goes far beyond Guy Fawkes and his ill-fated Gunpowder Plot…

In a desperate race against time, spy Christian Hardy must uncover a web of deceit that runs from the cock-fighting pits of Shoe Lane, to the tunnels beneath a bear-baiting arena in Southwark, and from the bad lands of Clerkenwell to a brutal firefight in The Globe theatre.

But of the forces ranged against Hardy, all pale beside the renegade Spanish agent codenamed Realm.


Recently finished

The Well of Saint Nobody by Neil Jordan (Head of Zeus)

The Hollow Throne by Tim Leach (Head of Zeus)


What Cathy (will) Read Next

The Night RaidsThe Night Raids (Nighthawk #3) by Jim Kelly (Allison & Busby)

A lone German bomber crosses the east coast of Britain on a moonless night in the long, hot summer of 1940. The pilot picks up the silver thread of a river and, following it to his target, drops his bomb over Cambridge’s rail yards. The shell falls short of its mark and lands in a neighbourhood of terraced streets on the edge of the city’s medieval centre.

DI Eden Brooke is first on the scene and discovers the body of an elderly woman, Nora Wylde, in a house on Elm Street, two fingers on her left hand severed, in what looks like a brutal attempt by looters to steal her rings.

When the next day Nora’s teenage granddaughter Peggy, a munitions worker, is reported missing, Brooke realises there is more to the situation than meets the eye.

#BookReview #BlogTour The Hollow Throne by Tim Leach @HoZ_Books @AriesFiction @TimLeachWriter #TheHollowThrone

Welcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for The Hollow Throne by Tim Leach. My thanks to Andrew at Head of Zeus for inviting me to take part in the tour and for my review copy.


About the Book

180 AD. North of the Wall, Sarmatian warrior Kai and his adopted tribe, the Votadini, struggle for survival, cast into unfamiliar lands by Roman reprisals.

When news arrives that an old enemy is in charge of the Votadini’s hated foes, a confederation of tribes known as the Painted People, and has roused them to action, Kai heads south towards the Wall, hoping to ally with the Romans against this resurgent threat.

Meanwhile, the Romans have heard tales of butchery and mayhem beyond the Wall. Lucius, Legate of the North, believes it is Kai and his allies who are responsible, and sends forth an expedition to capture his old comrade.

Can Kai and his loved ones survive the onslaught – or will the combined might of Rome and the hatred of their enemies spell the end for the warrior and his tribe?

Format: Hardback (320 pages) Publisher: Head of Zeus
Publication date: 3rd August 2023 Genre: Historical Fiction

Find The Hollow Throne on Goodreads

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Hive | Amazon UK 
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My Review

The Hollow Throne is the final book in The Sarmation Trilogy. Although it could be read as a standalone, The Hollow Throne has frequent references to events in the two earlier books – A Winter War and The Iron Way – so for full enjoyment I’d recommend starting from the beginning. In addition, there is so much in this final book that rests on the relationships between the main characters that have developed over the course of the series. As it happens, I haven’t read the first book, A Winter War, but I definitely intend to do so because I’m keen to learn more about the characters’ first encounters.

I’d never heard of the Sarmation people before reading The Iron Way and I suspect I wouldn’t be alone in that. Very little is known for certain about them as they left no written records and minimal archaeological evidence, other than that they were a nomadic, warlike people who travelled across the steppes of eastern Europe. However, a gap in the historical record is fertile ground for an author of historical fiction and Tim Leach has taken full advantage of this giving us a picture of a people bound together by ties of kinship but also by sacred oaths and a belief that to die in battle is glorious. And it’s not just the men who fearlessly ride into battle on their mighty steeds but the Sarmatian women too. It’s a culture in which once you’re too old to ride or wield a sword you’re expected to submit to the sword.

The book sees the return of four main characters: Sarmatian warrior Kai; his sister Laimei, known by the war name ‘the Cruel Spear’; Lucius, a Roman commander who, as a result of events in previous books, has formed strong ties with the Sarmatians; and Arite, the wife of Kai’s former friend and also briefly Kai’s lover. An old enemy returns too.

Second century Roman Britain was a dangerous time to be alive and death – violent death – was often close at hand. If you were lucky it was quick but if you weren’t it was anything but. As becomes all too clear, the fearsome Painted People are the masters of the slow death, fuelled by a messianic fervour whipped up by a ruthless and deranged leader who is the subject of the intensely dramatic Prologue.

The author brings a mystical element to the story with characters influenced by visions, dreams, legends handed down through the generations or sacred objects the possession of which can give the possessor untold power or unleash evil on the world. As Kai and his tattered band of comrades face what may be a pivotal confrontation with the Painted People he senses death all around him. ‘The land had forgotten them, but he was certain that its people had not. Ghosts seemed to watch them from every forest and bank of heather, unseen eyes clustering thick about the cairns on the hillsides, peering up from the swift-running river. It was as though an army of vengeful spirits closed about them, and what use were spears against the dead?’ But for those who crave action in their historical fiction, there’s plenty of that as well.

Being the final book in the trilogy, it’s not surprise that there is an elegaic air to it with some relationships repaired and others remaining severed forever because of betrayals and broken promises that can never be forgiven. I found some of the events towards the end of the book intensely moving, especially as the author resists the temptation to give every character a happy ending.

I found The Hollow Throne completely gripping and I can’t wait to see what Tim Leach comes up with next. In the meantime I shall be looking out my copy of A Winter War and adding to my wishlist The King and the Slave, the follow-up to The Last King of Lydia, the book that first introduced me to the author’s work.

In three words: Dramatic, immersive, gripping.

Try something similarA Night of Flames by Matthew Harffy


About the Author

Tim Leach is a graduate of the Warwick Writing Programme, where he now teaches as an Assistant Professor. His debut novel, The Last King of Lydia, was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize, and his first Sarmation Trilogy novel, A Winter War, was shortlisted for the Historical Writers’ Association Gold Crown Award.

Connect with Tim
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