First posted on Amazon.co.uk on 26 December 2011
Leaving his very successful Oathsworn series aside, Robert Low has started on a new series that takes place at the time of Robert the Bruce, William Wallace and Edward the first. Unfortunately, and along with many other reviewers, it is just not as good. While the story is reasonably well told, the author seems to have gone a bit "overboard" in a number of respects, taking the risk of putting of some of his readers.
First, there is the choice of the period itself. While the struggles in Scotland and the North in the last decade of the 13th century and the two first decades of the next century are, of course, fascinating, there are already a number of novels out there on this period (such as the first of the series of Robyn Young, which I mostly preferred to this one).
Second, it is also easy to go astray and portray the period as "a nation fighting for its freedom". To be fair, this is not (or rather not quite) what Robert Low does but he is somewhat borderline, almost biaised at times. One of the strong points of the book is to show that the nobility cared more about their own rivalries and interests than they cared about the common men. However, ever this is largely a simplification because both the nobles and the commoners were such mixed bunches that it is rather unsurprising to see them so divided. In fact, many of the Scottish nobles (but not all) were of franco-norman descent (such as the Bruce themselves or the Balliols), just like the "Anglo-norman" nobles. In both cases, their "mother-tongues" would be neither Scottish (and any Scottish dialect) not English, but French. Some of these families also had lands on BOTH sides of the border, in Scotland and in England - the Bruces being a prime - but by no means isolated - example. It is rather uncertain as to whether, after a few generations, the franco-norman nobles in Scotland would be speaking "Scottish", assuming there was a single language for all of the common people, which is also doubful. As to having Bruce speaking Gaelic, as he does early on in the book, this is simply not plausible.
This is where Robert Law, who has his characters speaking in "Scottish", goes over the top, overdoes it and may even seem biaised. If the point was to make the story "sound more authentic", then all of his knights on both sides should have spoken French all the time, as opposed to English or "Scottish". So it seems that the author has been somewhat selectively "authentic". Other points that are a bit overdone are the gore and stench. While the author clearly wanted to show the violence and the lack of cleanliness and hygiene and a time when you were old by the age of 40, I did have thge impression that both points were belabored.
Having done with all my gripes, there are also quite a few things that I did like with this book. One example was the way Low chose to portray William Wallace (I won't say more otherwise I'll have to give away some of the plot). Another was to somewhat minimize the physical importance of the Battle at Stirling: it was only the English vanguard that was defeated (a third of the total) and the armies were probably no more than 5000 or 6000 strong on each side.
Another good point was to show the problems that all kings in Europe were facing in the late 13th century: they could not keep their army together for periods in excess of a few months. Their logistics were rather poor. The feudal levies would largely leave after 40 days. The treasuries were often not sufficient to pay for large numbers of soldiers all year round. There was often also a high rate of desertions for various reasons: the campaign was harder than expected; the troops pay was in arrears or some troops disbanded and scattered to plunder the countryside. All these elements were very well shown on The Lion Wakes.
So, certainly a good read and worth three stars, but it could have been better.
