Release Date: 13/09/12
SYNOPSIS:
The long awaited return to Robert Low's Oathsworn series Island of Mann, 979AD. A man lies dying with a message he cannot take to his grave, a sworn secret that must be passed on only to Olaf Tryggvasson, kin of Harald Fairhair of the Yngling line and true prince of Norway, also known as Crowbone. When the message finally arrives, so begins a quest to discover its meaning, and for Crowbone to gain what is rightfully his: the crown of Norway. With a band of Chosen Men, Crowbone begins an unforgiving journey that will see him face the challenge of new enemies and confront his suspicions of treachery from old friends. Looming over all is his ultimate rival; Gunnhild, the Witch Mother of Kings, Crowbone's arch-enemy who will stop at nothing to prevent him from knowing what and where this secret is. In the fifth installment of his Oathsworn series, Robert Low is back to his full-blooded Viking best, this time visiting the harsh terrain of the North Sea coast, in a tale about one man's quest for survival and the unexpected alliances that emerge, as the very bonds that tie the Oathsworn together are put to the test.
REVIEW:
Fans of Robert Low’s Oathsworn have been baying for the Whale Road Raiders return for quite some time and with a successful group behind him, the real question for many is would the group live up to their expectations especially when he’s been immersed in the times of Robert the Bruce for the last couple of titles.
All this and more I can now answer and say, Yes, the Oathsworn are back and of course as good as they’ve always been. The story is fairly fast paced, the characters including a maturing Crowbone standing on their own with the Norn’s weaving a fate for them all that will have the ages singing of their heroism. It’s got top notch action sequences, a good deal of brain work (not only with the mind but by Axe as well. LOL) some magical twists and of course the treachery of an old enemy returned to hamper their efforts.
Add to this tight knit prose, a wonderful sense of dialogue which is all topped off with an adventure that readers will just love and all in I’m definitely looking forward to seeing what else Rob has in store for my favourite band of raiders.
Release Date: 14/04/11
SYNOPSIS:
A nation will fight for its freedom. The first novel in a major new series as Robert Low moves from the Vikings to the making of Scotland. In the dying days of the 13th century, Scotland is in turmoil. The death of Alexander III has plunged the country into war, both with itself and with Edward I of England. Determined to bring the north under his control, Edward instead unleashes a Scottish rebellion which unites the many warring factions against him - though the old hatreds are not easily put aside. Sir Hal Sientcler of Herdmanston, a minor noble of Lothian, finds himself caught up in the chivalry and honour, as well as the betrayal and murder that form these desperate days. As the rebellion gathers pace, Sir Hal is thrust into the maelstrom of plot and counterplot which shapes the lives of the great and good in both realms - including rebel leaders William Wallace and Robert the Bruce - as well as neighbours who now find themselves on opposite sides of the battlefield. Hal makes a powerful enemy out of the Earl of Buchan, arch-rival of the Bruces, and swears revenge. But first he must survive battles at Stirling Brig and Falkirk; the treachery of rival factions; and guard a secret that Robert the Bruce would protect from the outside world at any cost. When the lion wakes, everyone must fear its fangs!
REVIEW:
Historical Fiction is a thing of interest and whilst most people tend to stick to safe and secure periods where there’s a lot of information to draw from, a few authors take the brave step to dive into a world of confusion where history is written long after the principle players have passed. Such is the case in this new series (and the first book in it) by Rob Low as we get his interpretation of the First War of Independence (1296-1328) from the English Throne.
It’s definitely a title of interest and whilst I’m not as well versed in this period as a lot of the later ones it was a book that certainly captured my imagination. Add to this some wonderful twists, a whole set of interesting characters (both real and imagined) which when backed with a mature writing style and some great prose really made this period come to life for me.
The only real downside was the use of dialect and whilst I can understand it to a certain degree each use too me a bit to translate as well as to get the hang of. It can be a useful tool for an author but overdone it can lose the readers interest and as such, in my opinion, should be kept to a minimum. That said however, the book really was a joy to read and as such I’ll look forward to seeing Rob’s humanisation of the characters return in the next thrilling instalment.
Author of the Oathsworn series (published by Harper Collins), Robert Low, long time friend of Falcata Times took time out of his busy schedule to write a guest blog about not only his upcoming project but a bit about that rarely discovered beast, scottish history...
As anyone knows who regularly reads my blogs, I have just published the fourth in a series of books about a band of Norse known as the Oathsworn. After four books, I have decided to fade out on these wolves of the sea in favour of a new series, a trilogy on a subject close to my heart – the Scottish Wars of Independence.
Right there is where you hit the first granite stumbling block in researching this period. The Viking Age, I had thought, was a tough fishing exercise, a trawl through sparse accounts to hook out a nugget or two of possible fact and, since I like to keep things authentic, enough hard info for me to make reasonable suppositions regarding the unknown in their life and times.
The problem with coming up a few hundred years in time, to where the Dark was giving way to a little enlightenment, is not the pawkiness of sources, but exactly the opposite; history is crawling with accounts of the great and the good and their part in Scotland’s struggle for freedom. You can’t move for tripping over yet another addition to the legend that is Bruce or Wallace. Any punter in a pub will tell you about Bannockburn, where ‘proud Edward was sent home to think again’.
The biggest problem is figuring out not what they reveal, but what they hide.
In my travels round the world, I once went to Myanmar – Burma as was. The country, when it is allowed to be, is essential Buddhist, has lots of shrines and specialises in taking wafer-thin gold leaf and placing it, damp, on a statue of the Buddha so that, after a time, the original is lost and becomes no more than a shapeless, pioiusly worshipped shining lump of sparkling gold.
The Scottish Wars are like that. Bruce and Wallace are especially like that, so that the men they once were are somewhere under the shapeless preciousness created as legend. The period in history has likewise been gloss-painted almost out of all recognition, so that it is perfectly acceptable for most folk to imagine that the Scottish army painted their faces with saltires and lifted their kilts to show bare bums to the hated English - Not Guilty, Yer Honour, coz I am exercising my patriotic right. I saw it oan Braveheart, yer honour, which is for why I did it at the footie/rugby match. I rest ma case, Yer Honour.
The Scottish Wars of Independence, for a start, were not fought to free a nation from the yoke of the English. The harsh fact is that they were originally fought as a civil war between the Norman families brought in to revitalise the country by David I and also between the same Norman families and the Celtic hierarchy they were ousting from favour. Under Bruce, who murdered his rival – a Scot with a better claim to the throne than himself – the rival families of Badenoch, Balliol and Comyn were all but ethnically cleansed in the respite given to the new king Robert The Bruce by the lethargy of Edward II.
Nothing epitomises the problem more than the legends of Wallace and Bruce. You know the one – Wallace, the Scottish Joan of Arc with a beard like a badger’s arse and a sword not only monstrous but two hundred years too early. An obscure peasant gifted with clarity of vision and a sense of mission who, although serving a confused and undeserving king (John Balliol), gave his nation a sense of its destiny and a belief in itself.
Blind Harry is partly responsible for this, though it has to be said that The Actes and Deidis of the Illustre and Vallyeant Campioun Schir William Wallace is only comprehensible in the tranbslation from broad Scots into something approaching intelligible. He may have been, as Burns claimed, a Scottish Homer, but Harry claimed his work was based on a book by Father John Blair, Wallace's boyhood friend and personal chaplain. This book has not been seen in modern times and may never have existed; the poet's attribution of his story to a written text may have been a literary device - many contemporary critics believe that Acts and Deeds is based on oral traditions of Scotland.
In other words, Blind Harry was a typical minstrel of his day, (1440 – 1492) giving his audience exactly what he thought they wanted to hear because if he didn’t, he wouldn’t get paid. Nowadays we call them tabloid hacks.
Even by then, Wallace's reputation must have been legendary. Over the centuries, a powerful myth has been created around his person, fostered by diverse writers and even by Hollywood. There have been several periods throughout Scottish history when the interest in William Wallace intensified enormously, resulting in an increase of literary publications on the freedom fighter. Unsurprisingly, these appeared whenever the Scots were hacked off with the English rule and brought the old animosity between England and Scotland to new life.
Even today, these tensions cause many writers to revive memories of Wallace and his ideals by projecting the medieval story into their own time. Thus, more and more bits and pieces were added to the myth whose message seems to have had tremendous effects on the Scots so that, if the likes of Alex Salmond wants to boost the Nats will for more devolved government, all he has to do is say ‘Braveheart’ and he has hijacked Willie to stand at his shoulder.
The truth is harder to find as a result. Wallace was no peasant, for all Mel Gibson would like, in his American-inspired way, to evoke the poor good guys against the rich bad guys. Nor was he a knight, as is claimed by many anxious to promote him to the nobility of the day – though it is possible he was knighted later, when he had co-led the Scots to a victory at Stirling Bridge. Nor, despite the many claims for it, was he born in Elderlie, Renfrewshire, though the inhabitants there - in the true spirit of Wallace – refuse to give in. Blind Harry was cavalier with spelling and a better claim was always Ellerslie in Ayrshire - the re-discovery of Wallace’s seal in 1999 identifies him as son of Alan (not Malcolm) Wallace and Alan is known as ‘a crown tenant in Ayrshire’.
Nor was Wallace the democratic revolutionary or freedom fighter of modern mythology. Nor was he a native Celtic hero rebelling against the Norman invader.
So what do we know for sure? Precious little, in the end. I know as much about Harald Hadrada from two hundred years previous as I do about William Wallace. It is possible that he was, like many second sons of minor nobility, in training for the priesthood, but was already in trouble with the law before the whole business of kingship and rebellion began. It is interesting to speculate that, if Alexander, King of Scots, had not tumbled off a cliff and provoked the entire succession row, Wallace may well have ended up as a footnote in history detailing the extent of his band of outlaws and brigands in southern Scotland.
It is certain that, with Andrew Moray, he led the Scots to victory at Stirling Bridge in 1297. Moray, who had begun a rebellion in the north and joined forces with Wallace, was arguably a more acceptable face for it than Wallace, since Moray was a an altogether brighter knight and lord. He might well have been the one with the military experience, too since without him – he was wounded and died at Stirling Bridge – Wallace lost the return match the next year at Falkirk.
More certain still is the relentless, driving stubbornness that would not persuade Wallace to give in when everyone else had – or give up supporting the cause of the disgraced and fled King John Balliol long after it was clear that no-one, not even Balliol, wanted his bum on the throne. In the end, inevitably, Wallace was betrayed, almost with a sense of relief it seems to me, from a country heartily sick of the depredations of war.
The legend of Bruce is just as monstrous and shrouding and his own chroniclers just as devisive – the best, in my opinion, is the one written circa 1355 by Sir Thomas Gray, held prisoner in the latest round of the Scottish Wars. Called the Scalacronica, it was written more as a history of his father, also called Thomas, who fought against Bruce in the campaigns around Bannockburn in 1314. Precisely because it details the life of his dad – whom he is not about to portray as anything less than heroic – you have to read it through that prism, but it is the nearest to a contemporary, unbiased account as we will get.
The rest of the legend, spider in the cave and all, has made Bruce into The Hero King, so that even the blessed Nigel Tranter could find excuses in his famous trilogy of books, for Bruce’s capitulations, coat-turning and politicking.
The truth, as I have found it, is much more interesting. Bruce was a man imbued with a frightening sense of his own destiny to rule. A man prepared to lie, cheat, steal and murder in order to achieve it. A man who could sacrifice all his brothers but one to the cause, his sister to a cage on a castle wall and his wife to years of confinement. A man who, for all that, knew the worth of what he sought and what he was doing it for.
Nor was he the beloved leader, followed by a rich panoply of brave knights prepared to die for him. The famed Black James Douglas, who eventually carried his heart and died on crusade with it, almost turned his own coat and betrayed him in the dark days after the battle of Methven. Seton, who became the staunchest of Bruce supporters, was an equally staunch Plantagenet ally right up until the very eve of Bannockburn. Patrick, Earl of Dunbar, did not go over to Bruce until Edward II came scampering back through his castle, fleeing Bannockburn. The Earl of Ross was the one who captured all Bruce’s women – sisters wife and two of his brothers – as they tried to make their was through the north of Scotland to safety.
Even Bannockburn, that battle which any Scot can tell you about in detail, is veiled. Strip away what is supposition and hearsay, leave what is fact and you know only that two kings, one of Scots, the other English, came together in a field near Stirling with an unknown amount of men on either side and fought a battle. The English lost.
Mind you, when all is said and done that last fact, for a Scot in a pub, is enough for him not to worry overly about the rest.
BOOK BLURB:
The epic and action packed sequel to THE WHITE RAVEN, charting the adventures of Orm and his band of brothers, the Oathsworn.
The Oathsworn have become feared and respected throughout the Viking world. Their name goes before them and men cower in their presence. But fame comes at a price… While the Oathsworn revel in their new-found fame, Sterki, an old enemy with revenge in his heart, attacks their homestead - the Fjord Elk is sunk, old oarmates die and the Oathsworn are forced to flee into the mountains. Unused to losing, the Oathsworn retreat to lick their wounds. They have been entrusted with the care of Queen Sigrith, pregnant and soon to bear the heir to the crown of Sweden, and much though the urge for revenge is strong, Orm's first duty is to protect the queen. And Orm soon realises that revenge is not the only thing on Sterki's mind; has joined forces with Styrbjorn, nephew of King Eirik and next in line to the throne if he can only get rid of the current heir. As the Oathsworn fight to defend themselves and their newfound celebrity and fortune, they're soon to realise that fame isn't all it's cracked up to be…
REVIEW:
Batten down the hatches, light the torches and grab your swords as you prepare to sail the sea’s in this, the forth offering in the Oathsworn series. Not only is the adventure along with the fame of the Oathsworn growing but Rob really does search the tales of the ancient norse to weave a thread that the Norn’s would be proud to call their own. Not only does Rob bring a great offering to the table but he adds a touch of the old David Gemmell magic into the heroics of the crew taking their own tale to greater heights. It’s sad to say that this is going to be the last offering in the Oathsworn series for a while and whilst its going to be a long wait for their next adventure the magic within will only help to swell those who seek to join Rob’s Shield Wall.
