On the whole, this one felt a bit sprawling, but I enjoyed reading a historical novel about Scotland for a change. ( )

Great read. Well written, engaging, enlightening... A really good start to the trilogy and whilst I'm not fond of us English being the enemy, I'll definitely be reading more. ( )

This is a great start to what should be an in-depth look at the life of Robert the Bruce. Robyn Young brought Robert to life and gave him some great and realistic motivations behind the actions the history books tell us. Well-researched, well-written, and wide-ranging. I look forward to reading the rest of the trilogy!

* I received this book for free from Goodreads First Reads. ( )

This is the first in a trilogy about Robert the Bruce, King of the Scots. In this first book, we meet him as a youth and witness the events that shape his childhood and early manhood. I found this a confusing book, possibly because I had already read Nigel Tranter's excellent trilogy about the Bruce, which starts with him as an adult. I was constantly trying to reconcile what I already knew with the information being presented in the book. The length of the book also put me off for some reason; it is a massive trade paperback and for some reason it felt longer than the Tranter books, which are mass market paperback and have about the same page count. And although I liked some set pieces (Alexander III's death and the Maid of Norway's voyage were well done, with the latter being especially chilling), overall the writing just didn't hook me for some reason. I'm going to have to set this trilogy aside for the foreseeable future. ( )

In the 13th century King Edward the First of England has conquered Wales and now sets his sights on Scotland. After the convenient death of the Scottish King Edward invades and sets up a new puppet monarch. The Scottish nobles are not happy but fight amongst themselves. One family of powerful nobles with a claim to the throne are the Bruce family and this book follows the story of Robert Bruce from childhood through service to the king and finally through to exile after supporting William Wallace.

As this is the 700th anniversary of the battle of Bannockburn there has been much about Bruce in the media and as someone with an interest in medieval history I thought to give this book a go. It's a weighty tome and obviously well-researched but it just didn't grab my attention as much as it could have done. The difficulty with historical fiction is melding fictional characterisation to historical facts and that is where Young's writing falls down for me. However I have bought the second book in the series so I will continue the story! ( )