Rue Dunbar's Reviews > Boudica: Dreaming the Bull

Once again, I'll preface this by saying I know very little of the real history of this period, so can't really comment on that aspect of the book....

But once again, this was a wonderful book!

Everything that was brilliant about the first book is also brilliant about the second book, but with the added bonus that since the reader already knows the characters and cultures, less time is spent on set-up and more time is spent in the thick of things.

The positives...

Manda Scott's prose is beautiful and her attention to detail when it comes to (re)creating ancient Britain and Rome is remarkable. She takes care to involve all the senses as she describes each scene and the end result is breathtaking - the reader emerges from each chapter feeling like they have just lived it alongside the main characters.

Where her writing really shines, in my opinion, is in the dialogue between characters. A large number of the major conflicts in this book are explored through conversations between a pair, or small group, of characters. This might sound less exciting than constant battles, duels and daring adventures but I would say, without a doubt, that the tensest, most stressful moments in the book all revolve around one-to-one conversations between characters.

Which is not to say that Manda Scott doesn't write blood and guts and action sequences when she needs to. She does. But she does so sparingly, and her restraint really pays off. Violence and brutality remain shocking because she takes care not to allow the reader to become desensitised to it.

The characters we love and hate (and hate to love and love to hate) are all back, with a few new faces to make up for those we lost in book one. The characters are wonderfully written and feel utterly believable - Ban is probably still my favourite... even if I can't call him Ban anymore...

The negatives...

Are there any....? Certainly no major ones...

I suppose one thing (although it wasn't a problem for me) is that for a book about Boudica, she really wasn't in it very much. I'd have to go back and count chapters to be sure but I'd guess at least two-thirds, maybe three-quarters of the book did not feature Boudica at all. Obviously, the Roman invasion of Britain did not revolve around one woman, and Manda Scott is trying to tell a wider story here, not just a straight biography of Boudica. If you are reading this series only wanting to hear about her, however, or you became particularly attached to her viewpoint chapters in book one, you may be a little disappointed by her lack of 'screentime' in this book.

I would say I preferred this to book one, and am very excited to see where the series goes next. Thanks again to the Brothers Gwynne for hosting the readalong!