Booklog 106/2020: Elizabeth Chadwick: The Coming of the Wolf

[jacey]

I'm a big fan of Elizabeth Chadwick's historical novels. This is set just three years after William, Duke of Normandy, invaded at Hastings, killed Harold and took the English crown, but the actual Conquest continues with the Harrying of the North which caused whole tracts of land to be listed as 'waste' in the Domesday Book because William's thugs had put down a potential rebellion with extreme prejudice. That's the background. The main characters are entirely fictional, but there are actual historical personages on the periphery. Lady Christen witnesses her elderly husband's murder when their manor is attacked, and barely a day later she's agreed to marry Miles Le Gallois, Lord of Milnham on Wye, because he's her best option for protecting the manor and the people in it. Miles has ambition. He marries Christen as a preemptive move to gain her lands, but in doing so angers those further up the food chain. As you might expect from a Chadwick novel, love grows, but there's also plenty of peril and action. It's a quick read with a good climax, but the final resolution happens off the page which rounds it off nicely, but is a little disappointing.