Druids

Rating:
Summary: Nomadic Druids meet Stifling Romans
Review: This book was one I couldn't put down once I started it. At first I was a mite bit apprehensive, but it quickly captured my imagination..it had enough fighting, and enough sensibility along with fleshing out of characters to put it on my list of must read books.

Rating:
Summary: A Spoon full of magic helps the history go down!
Review: This book was wonderful! It was a history lesson without being boring I found myself cheering on the ones I knew to be the losers actually hoping that Llwelyn would simply rewrite history she develops likeable and charasmatic characters you truly empathize with. With enough magic to make it a wonderful fiction and just enough history to make it real and believable to the reader.

Rating:
Summary: Great historical fiction
Review: This is the only book I have ever read from the perspective of the defeated Gauls. The clash of cultures is vividly portrayed by contrasting the mechanical Romans, with their square camps and uniformity, to the nature loving Druids and semi-disorganized warriors.
The book was thrilling and brought alive the events from history. It is one of the best historical novels I have ever read!

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: This was a great book, very interesting and hard to put down. Sure, it's one-sided and paints the Romans as an unredeemable evil and the Celts as heroic and free and noble. But it is historical _fantasy_.

Rating:
Summary: NEW AGE HISTORICAL FICTION
Review: Unfortunately, the cover art is appropriate: This is the first New Age Historical Drama that I've ever read. If this book were mostly about Vercingetorix "Rix" organizing the Celts against Caesar and his army, this might have been an entertaining and historically informative story. However, the story is told in first person by Ainvar the Druid, who spends nearly every page communicating with the spirits in the Otherworld. Hardly a page goes by without Ainvar and his "new age" prophesizing about everything. The monotony of this is only broken when he is assisting Rix in organizing the splintered Celtic tribes of Gaul against Caesar and his army - but whatever momentum is created here is soon lost with more Ainvar and his ceremonies and sacrifices (at one point he kills roosters for rain). Granted, we don't know much about Druids, so Llywelyn had to take a wild stab at how much influence they would have had during these campaigns - I think the story would have been more effective had it been from Rix's point of view.
The other nag with this story is the outrageously anachronistic dialog. Ainvar repeatedly refers to his tribesmen as "Celts." This was a phrase applied to them in the 19th century - small beans? Maybe, but the language that he uses would leave you to believe that he attended formal schooling.
I think Morgan Llywelyn is a very good writer, but I don't think that this story is very good.

Rating:
Summary: NEW AGE HISTORICAL FICTION
Review: Unfortunately, the cover art is appropriate: This is the first New Age Historical Drama that I've ever read. If this book were mostly about Vercingetorix "Rix" organizing the Celts against Caesar and his army, this might have been an entertaining and historically informative story. However, the story is told in first person by Ainvar the Druid, who spends nearly every page communicating with the spirits in the Otherworld. Hardly a page goes by without Ainvar and his "new age" prophesizing about everything. The monotony of this is only broken when he is assisting Rix in organizing the splintered Celtic tribes of Gaul against Caesar and his army - but whatever momentum is created here is soon lost with more Ainvar and his ceremonies and sacrifices (at one point he kills roosters for rain). Granted, we don't know much about Druids, so Llywelyn had to take a wild stab at how much influence they would have had during these campaigns - I think the story would have been more effective had it been from Rix's point of view.
The other nag with this story is the outrageously anachronistic dialog. Ainvar repeatedly refers to his tribesmen as "Celts." This was a phrase applied to them in the 19th century - small beans? Maybe, but the language that he uses would leave you to believe that he attended formal schooling.
I think Morgan Llywelyn is a very good writer, but I don't think that this story is very good.

Rating:
Summary: Defense
Review: While I do not consider this to be one of the greatest books I've ever read, it certainly is a good one. It has it's flaws, yes. Every book does.
I was a little surprised that Llywelyn actually included human sacrifice in her portrayal of the druids, considering that the only source of "witness" to such practices were the Romans themselves, who, being the enemy of the Gallic Celts, were known to create various lies to plant fear of the druids in the minds of their followers. Note that I am not deducting any stars due to this, though, because there is very little we know about the Celts and their lives and one cannot be absolutely certain.
However, I feel the need to defend this book against some of the reviews, because, frankly, many of them were down-right stupid.
Take, for instance, the reviewer who deducted a star merely because it had a "sad ending". How many books have sad endings? Some of the greatest books of all time do! It has nothing to do with the quality of the book, so don't deduct from the average star review for such a stupid thing as that! He follows up with an "Oh, well, that's history" attitude. So why deduct the star at all?
Oh, and the person who complains about the central character being "egotistical"...So what if he ever showed any signs of egotism? That's his character! Once again, that's a part of the story. And then you spoke of the Romans being "exaggerated". That's because it was from the Gallic Celts' point of view. Of course they're going to portray the Romans that way! It's their point of view! Oh, and if you're going to bash a book, at least use something resembling good English grammar so you don't look like a complete fool. There's a difference between typos and not using anything resembling capitalization, punctuation, etc. When talking about the Romans, use the plural form of the word. "of Roman" does not cut it.
And there was another man who said the characters were too "sophisticated" for him, because the Celts are shrouded in such mystery. You're right, there is much we do not know. But the author has the license to guess. She seems to have done a fairly good job at remaining as historically accurate as possible. What do you want her to do? Have paper-thin, 2-dimensional characters? Come on! She has to breathe life into them somehow! And there is hardly a reason to believe that the Celts didn't have the vocabulary to express concepts such as "professional jealousy."
Sorry for ranting like this, but I'm tired of stupid, trivial reviews complaining about stupid things. Reviews such as "this isn't what I was looking for", so the book itself is terrible because "I was unaware of its true content".
Like I said, this wasn't a perfect book. I give it four stars because I believe it deserves that much for it's fluidity and presentation. It reads pretty well. But it lacks something.

Rating:
Summary: Where is the "history" in "historical fiction"?
Review: While the account of the Gallic Wars from the side of the Gauls is a noble ambition, perhaps Ms. Llewellyn should have studied her Roman history a *tad* better. Glaring errors in the book's Latin, in its history, and the vilification of the Romans made what might have been an enjoyable book into a simple diatribe against Rome. "Know thy enemy," says the adage; perhaps, if Ms. Llewellyn seeks to peddle her anti-Roman invective, it's a piece of advice she might do well to heed.

Rating:
Summary: Utterly Fantastic
Review: Wow!!! This is the first book that I have read by Morgan Llywelyn and it is the most rivoting book I have ever read. Since I am a Druid myself, I have found that Morgan has captured the essence of the belief system and provided a historical backdrop for this long forgotten religion that was part of the Celtic daily life. It has not only become my favorite novel, but it is on my referenc bookshelf as well. If you just like a damn good story it succeeds as well. It truly is a page burner.