My version: Paperback
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Canelo
First published: 2023
ISBN: 978-1-80436-548-9
Pages: 379
Bought
From the cover:
Heavy is the head that wears the crown.
Northumbria, AD864. A Viking warlord is killed in brutal fashion, an event that will shape the future of the nation for decades to come.
Mercia, AD868. A princeling of Wessex draws his first blood on the battlefield. It will not be his last.
A devastating scourge from the north is coming to Britain. Traveling along the whale road in their feared longships, the Great Heathen Army move fast, striking with a savagery unmatched.
One inexperienced warrior will prove the difference, a young man who will lead from the front and, in time, aspire to become the saviour of the Saxons…Alfred The Great.
Well, damn! Would you look at that?! Now I’ve got another Steven A. McKay historical fiction series to keep buying.
From the start, Steven’s Alfred is certainly different from Bernard Cornwell’s, or rather, from the TV series’ ‘The Last Kingdom‘s Alfred The Pain In The Bleeding Backside. Actually, I can’t rightly remember Alfred from The Last Kingdom books. Though that probably says all there needs to be said of Bernard Cornwell’s Alfred anyway. Steven’s Alfred is much more of a character that you could imagine would inspire his followers, and eventually deserve the ‘Great.’ He’s not henpecked, is not insipid, is not a right royal prat,
The Heathen Hoard‘s Alfred, is a hard-drinking, hard-womanising, hard fighting, all round irritating third or fourth or however many brothers he had, son, who never expected to need to clean his act up, because he never expected to be getting anywhere near being king. He’d out drink, out fight then chew up and spit out Cornwell’s Alfred, that for sure. And all while never going anywhere near a bloody church. Unless it actually was a bloody church – one that had been ‘visited’ by the Danes first, that is to say.
Of course, I’m not happy about all the bad things being said about the Danes, though. Being a Dane myself, and all. However, I’ll put my newly aquiterd nationalistic feeling aside, because I’ll have to take my red and white hat off for the feeling of menace, the brooding presence and the feeling of impending doom, that Steven manages to conjour up whenever you even suspect the Danes might be within a page or two of making another appearance. Of course, it did get pretty close to all going wrong for Englaland at the time, and it was only Alfred’s quick thinking and daring that saved the day, as he does here. I think Steven really has captured both the essence of the spirit of the times, the zeitgeist, and exactly what made Alfred the Great, great. He has without doubt succeeded in creating one of the really great Historical Fiction series set in this period while doing it. Since I read all my Alfred Duggan books, anyway.
As an aside: There always, as always in Historical Fiction novels of this type, there seems to be food and drink a-plenty, at all times, in unlimited quantities. Quite how accurate that is, I’m not sure. I’m sceptical. The Medieval supermarkets must be doing a roaring trade. We’ve not had the freshly baked bread at any hour of the day or night yet, but it’s only the first book of the series, so it’s surely just a matter of time...
You can buy The Heathen Hoard by Steven A. McKay from Amazon
Couldn't I Just Tell You 