Avelynn
A Novel
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3,8 • 5 notes
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- 12,99 $US
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- 12,99 $US
Description de l’éditeur
This dazzling debut brings the Dark Ages to light and illuminates one Saxon noblewoman's romance with a Viking warrior and her struggle to find her path in a changing and dangerous world
869. For eighteen years, Avelynn, the beautiful and secretly pagan daughter of the Ealdorman of Somerset, has lived in an environment of love, acceptance, and equality. Somerset has flourished under twenty years of peace. But with whispers of war threatening their security, Avelynn's father makes an uncompromising decision that changes her life forever.
Forced into a betrothal with Demas, a man who only covets her wealth and status, Avelynn's perception of independence is shattered. With marriage looming, she turns to her faith, searching for answers in an ancient ritual along the coast, only to find Alrik The Blood-Axe and sixty Viking berserkers have landed.
In a year of uncertainty that sees Avelynn discover hidden powers, stumble into a passionate love affair with Alrik, and lead men into battle, Avelynn must walk a fine line as her deceptions mount and Demas' tactics to possess her become more desperate and increasingly brutal.
Avelynn and Alrik are caught in the throes of fate as they struggle to find the way back to themselves and onwards to each other.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Campbell's conventional fiction debut begins in the year 869 C.E. in Wessex, Britain, and follows Avelynn, daughter of the Earl of Somerset. Avelynn hopes to marry for love, but her father betroths her to Demas of Wareham, whom she dislikes. Avelynn, somewhat unbelievably, is secretly a pagan; after slipping away for a ritual, she encounters Alrik, a Viking boat captain on his way to Ireland. The two fall in love, but Demas's machinations, the looming Viking invasion of Britain, and Avelynn's station in life conspire to keep them apart. Though the novel is adequately researched, the heroine's anachronistic attitudes are grating, and Campbell's prose is clunky. The plot moves well, but characters change their minds about major issues seemingly at whim, and the complexity and depth of the political history is not written as well as the romance which, although fairly well executed, is predictable at its heart.
