From Amazon.co.uk
Dreaming the Eagle , the first volume of Manda Scott's "Boudica" sequence, is as much about establishing our sense of the issues at stake as it is about Breaca, the future Boadicea, herself. We are given a comprehensive and complex picture of pre-Roman British society--one which neither excludes the down-side of an aristocratic warrior society full of powerful mystics and touchy snobs nor regards it as significantly stranger or more primitive than the Romans these Celts are bound sooner or later to have to fight.
Breaca is a talented fighter, but her real interest is in breeding and training horses; for once, we get a picture of ancient Britain in which economic activity is a serious factor. Scott has an imaginative sympathy with opposed ways of life--Breaca's brother Ban spends time as a slave in Roman territory before being rescued by a Roman friend, and he comes to see much of what is worst and also what is best about Rome. This is the best sort of historical fiction--exciting, full of a sense of how different times feel, and also intelligent about historical issues; Scott knows that at the point when historical events happen, they seem as if they are open chances. --Roz Kaveney
Product Description
Boudica: the last defender of the Celtic culture; the only woman openly to have led her warriors into battle; the only British warrior to have stood successfully against the might of Imperial Rome - and triumphed. This is her story. It is also the story of the two men she loved most: Caradoc, outstanding warrior and inspirational leader; and her half-brother Ban, Roman captive, slave auxiliary and Dreamer - the Druid whose eventual return to the Celts is Boudica's salvation. It is 33AD, and Breaca, the red-haired daughter of one of the high-born leaders of the Eceni tribe is on the cusp between girl and womanhood. She longs to be a Dreamer, a mystical leader who can foretell the future, but having killed the man who has attacked and killed her mother, she has proved herself a warrior. Beside her is Ban, her half-brother, who longs to be a warrior, though he is manifestly a Dreamer, possibly the finest in his tribe's history. Having saved Caradoc, the future war-leader of his people, who has been shipwrecked on the Eceni shore, Breaca and her family travel to his father's court, where they are betrayed, and Ban is sold into slavery in Gaul. Believing Breaca to have been killed, Ban swears vengeance on Caradoc's tribe, then focuses on staying alive in an alien land where even to admit to being a Celtic Dreamer is to invite instant death. Ten years later, Ban, whose skill as a horseman has enabled him to join the Roman cavalry, finds himself as part of the new emperor Claudius' invading army. Across the Medway, British forces face the Roman legions. At their head is Breaca, leader of both the Eceni tribe and the warriors of Mona, Britain's bravest fighters. Against her, a key member of Claudius' cavalry elite, is Ban, hatred burning in his heart, vengeance on his lips. Both are unaware of the other's existence. Both are prepared to fight to the death. DREAMING THE EAGLE is full of brilliantly realised, luminous scenes of real power, as the narrative sweeps effortlessly from the epic - where battle scenes are huge, bloody, and action-packed - to the intimate in which a closely observed scene between two lovers is movingly described. This is a big book with big themes: the clash of opposite cultures, bringing with it the end of a society with its beliefs, moral codes and spiritual values. It describes with total authenticity and a searing intelligence the way we once were, while pointing forward to what we have become.
