Tag: historical fiction

#Giveaway Odin’s Game by Tim Hodkinson @AriesFiction

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WinI’m delighted to give one lucky person the chance to win a paperback copy of Odin’s Game by Tim Hodkinson, the first book in his Whale Road Chronicles series. Enter via Rafflecopter here. Please read the giveaway terms and conditions below before entering.

Terms and Conditions

  1. UK postal addresses only.
  2. No giveaway only accounts.
  3. Entrants must be aged 18 or over.
  4. Entries must be received by midnight (UK time) on 10th October 2021
  5. The winner will be selected at random via Rafflecopter from all valid entries and will be notified via Twitter.
  6. The winner must claim their book by sending a direct message to @AriesFiction
  7. Any personal data given as part of the competition entry is used for this purpose only and will not be shared with third parties.
  8. I am not responsible for despatch or delivery of the prize.

Odin's GameAbout the Book

AD 915. In the Orkney Isles, a young woman flees her home to save the life of her unborn child. Eighteen years later, a witch foretells that evil from her past is reaching out again to threaten her son.

Outlawed from his home in Iceland, Einar Unnsson is thrown on the mercy of his Uncle, the infamous Jarl Thorfinn ‘Skull Cleaver’ of Orkney. He joins forces with a Norse-Irish princess and a company of wolfskin-clad warriors to become a player in a deadly game for control of the Irish sea, where warriors are the pawns of kings and Jarls and the powerful are themselves mere game pieces on the tafl board of the Gods. Together they embark on a quest where Einar must fight unimaginable foes, forge new friendships, and discover what it truly means to be a warrior.

As the clouds of war gather, betrayal follows betrayal and Einar realises the only person he can really trust is himself.

Not everyone will survive, but who will conquer all in Odin’s game?

Find Odin’s Game (The Whale Road Chronicles #1) on Goodreads

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Hodkinson,TimAbout the Author

Tim Hodkinson grew up in Northern Ireland where the rugged coast and call of the Atlantic ocean led to a lifelong fascination with Vikings and a degree in Medieval English and Old Norse Literature. Tim’s more recent writing heroes include Ben Kane, Giles Kristian, Bernard Cornwell, George R.R. Martin and Lee Child.

After several years in the USA, Tim has returned to Northern Ireland, where he lives with his wife and children.

Connect with Tim
Website | Twitter | Goodreads

Whale Road Chronicles Tim Hodkinson

#BookReview The Redeemed by Tim Pears

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The RedeemedAbout the Book

It is 1916. The world has gone to war, and young Leo Sercombe, hauling coal aboard the HMS Queen Mary, is a long way from home. The wild, unchanging West Country roads of his boyhood seem very far away from life aboard a battle cruiser, a universe of well-oiled steel, of smoke and spray and sweat, where death seems never more than a heartbeat away.

Skimming through those West Country roads on her motorcycle, Lottie Prideaux defies the expectations of her class and sex as she covertly studies to be a vet. But the steady rhythms of Lottie’s practice, her comings and goings between her neighbours and their animals, will be blown apart by a violent act of betrayal, and a devastating loss.

In a world torn asunder by war, everything dances in flux: how can the old ways life survive, and how can the future be imagined, in the face of such unimaginable change? How can Leo, lost and wandering in the strange and brave new world, ever hope to find his way home?

Format: Paperback (400 pages)    Publisher: Bloomsbury
Publication date: 13th June 2019 Genre: Historical Fiction

Find The Redeemed on Goodreads

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My Review

Shortlisted for The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2020, The Redeemed is the final book in Tim Pears’s West Country trilogy. The first two books in the trilogy – The Horseman and The Wanderers – made the longlists for The Walter Scott Prize in 2018 and 2019 respectively.  The Redeemed continues the stories of Leo Sercombe and Lottie Prideaux from the previous two books; the events in their lives being told in parallel and only converging at the end of the book.

Part one of the book recounts Leo’s experiences serving in the Navy aboard a coal-powered battle cruiser, during which he witnesses the Battle of Jutland and its deadly aftermath. Meanwhile Lottie, much to the dismay of her father’s new wife, has become assistant to the local vet, learning how to treat sick farm and domestic animals. It’s a changing world in which conscription has robbed estates, like those owned by Lottie’s father, of farm workers but there is also the possibility of new opportunities for women. Lottie’s ambition is to study veterinary science but all that is put at risk by a violent act from a quite unexpected quarter.

In the mistaken belief that his future lies elsewhere, part three of the book sees Leo, now a qualified diver, employed in a bold scheme to raise the battleships scuttled by the German navy in Scapa Flow at the end of the war. Leo undertakes this dangerous work to pursue his dream of earning enough money to purchase a piece of land where he can return to his first love, working with horses. Despite everything, he keeps alive the hope that he will be able to fulfil a promise made long ago.

Each part of the book contains an immense amount of detail: about daily life aboard a battleship, the care of horses and cattle, or the steps needed to float a submerged ship. Flowing throughout the book, however, is a deep sense of the natural world.  Eventually, the stories of Leo and Lottie converge and what follows is touching and intensely moving both for its intensity and its transcience.

The Redeemed is like a long train journey where, whilst you’re keen to reach your destination, there’s also immense joy to be found in watching the beautiful scenery go by.

In three words: Lyrical, moving, immersive

Try something similar: The Winter Soldier by Daniel Mason

Time Pears authorAbout the Author

Born in 1956, Tim Pears grew up in Devon and left school at sixteen. He worked in a wide variety of unskilled jobs: trainee welder, assistant librarian, trainee reporter, archaeological worker, fruit picker, nursing assistant in a psychiatric ward, groundsman in a hotel & caravan park, fencer, driver, sorter of mail, builder, painter & decorator, night porter, community video maker and art gallery manager in Devon, Wales, France, Norfolk and Oxford.

Always he was writing, and in time making short films. He took the Directing course at the National Film and Television School, graduating in the same month that his first novel, In the Place of Fallen Leaves, was published, in 1993. In the Place of Fallen Leaves was awarded the Hawthornden Prize and the Ruth Hadden Memorial Award.

Tim’s second novel, In a Land of Plenty, was made into a ten-part drama series for the BBC broadcast in 2001. Other novels include  A Revolution of the Sun, Wake Up, Blenheim Orchard, Landed and Disputed Land. Landed was given the MJA Open Book Award and was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize and the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

In the Light of Morning was a departure, set in Yugoslavia in the Second World War. Tim then embarked on his most ambitious work, a trilogy of novels (The Horseman, The Wanderers and The Redeemed) set before, during and in the aftermath of the First World War.

Tim is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. (Bio credit: Author website/Photo credit: Goodreads author page)

Connect with Tim
Website | Goodreads