Dreaming the Eagle (Scott, Manda. Boudica Trilogy.)

Rating:
Summary: An Exciting Story Chronicled by a Masterful Storyteller
Review: Amanda Scott's sweeping novel takes place in Tribal Britain in the 1st century A.D. She builds a believable story from the fragments of recorded Roman history that describe the pre-Roman Iron Age. Modern archaeology provides scraps for her imaginative fiction. Boudica lived, but her story is a rich fabrication that makes one yearn for more in subsequent books.

Young Breaca nic Graine witnesses her mother's murder by a renegade Coritani warrior. The girl grabs her father's boar spear and kills the intruder, earning her first red kill-feather, the mark of an Eceni warrior. Breaca dreams, however, of holding the title of Dreamer, a coveted tribal position. A Dreamer possesses the gift of witnessing future events and interpreting visions of life and death. Dreamers are accompanied and protected by Warriors.

Additional major players in Scott's drama are Ban, Breaca's half-brother; Caradoc, third son of Cunobelin, the Sun-Hound; Corvus, a shipwrecked soldier of Rome; and Airmid, Breaca's Eceni Dreamer and friend. Throughout the tale, Ban's life and aspirations are second only to Breaca's. Ban, at eight years, experiences his first dream and is the potential greatest Dreamer of the Eceni. His path leads to distant lands, first as slave and then as Roman citizen, with his eventual return to Eceni territory.

Breaca accepts her place as Warrior and heir apparent to succeed her mother as tribal leader. She lives a bittersweet existence, forsaking womanly love for the training and ritual behavior befitting a warrior princess. DREAMING THE EAGLE is a story of peaceful agrarian peoples who defend their homes when provoked by aggression.

Love and dependence upon animals is a featured keynote of the novel. Hounds are hunters, companions and needed warriors when tribes are attacked. Horses are used for war as well. Ban devotes himself to the care of an angry multicolored mare he called the Crow. She performs for him when his life is at risk, killing those who attack with the thrust of her mighty hooves.

The author takes license with history in her telling of the Roman invasion of Britain by the legions of Caligula. He is shown to be licentious, evil, crafty, self-serving and vain. From other historians, we can agree with Scott's assessments of Caligula. He, among other self-serving men, is the hated enemy.

Scott catalogues her story with lists of names, their pronunciations, tribal groups and their locations, maps of probable tribal lands and Roman invasion routes. Her descriptions of battles, their outcomes, personal struggles and resolutions are developed with poetic beauty. DREAMING THE EAGLE is an exciting story chronicled by a masterful storyteller. If Iron Age existence was an iota of the reality Scott pictures, we can identify with and cheer for her people.

--- Reviewed by Judy Gigstad

Rating:
Summary: Dreaming the Eagle
Review: I enjoyed this overall but have some quibbles.

Firstly, though the author appends a bibliography, I find her portrayal of pre-Roman Celtic cultures less than believable. They're *interesting* people, as she portrays them, but nothing that I, as a non-expert, have read about these cultures' actual religion, social structure, or archeology matches what Scott has devised. We don't know much about early Celtic religion, but Scott's book doesn't even take into account what we do know; here are the Iceni apparently without Epona (though Scott spells them 'Eceni' for some reason). She seems to have based her Celts on Native Americans to some extent (dreams of totem animals, for example), and I'm not sure there's historical justification for that. I was confused by the portrayal of Boudica as fighting beside Caractacus against an initial Roman invasion (the work on Boudica I have previously seen has her first encountering Romans in her own homeland), and I found the gender equality in the society unbelievable. I could accept spiritual and perhaps political power in women's hands, but I can't believe that women warriors would be common in a culture that fights primarily hand to hand.

However, I was able to look past these issues and think of the book as semi-fantasy, and on that level I enjoyed it. The plot is dramatic, perhaps a bit over-long, but with plenty of action and lots of pain for the characters. The latter are reasonably appealing, with the troubled Ban a standout. I was disappointed with the rapid demise of Amminios, who was shaping up to be an intelligent and interesting antagonist. But the dark ending makes up for a lot. I will be reading the sequel.

Rating:
Summary: lacks character development, dialogue, and plot
Review: The best things about this book are the battle scenes and the historical setting. Unfortunately the characters never feel very real or believable. Key characters like Eburovic (Breaca's father) figure prominently in some sections and then disappear from the story even though they haven't gone anywhere. The second most important character, Ban (Breaca's brother), never develops a personality of his own and never feels remotely convincing.
Buyers should also be warned that sections of the book include episodes of homosexuality, rape, and sexual mutilation. Some sections are gratuitously perverse, while at other points the book reads like a gay romance novel. This book is definitely not appropriate for children.