She is intelligent, calculating, ambitious and in many ways not an easy person to be around. It is the story of a remarkable woman in a time when not much is know about many individual women. The story of Hild follows the titular character as she finds herself as a seeress to the king of Northumbria, her uncle. And just in time – 2023 will see the publication of Menewood, an immediate sequel to Hild, and I for one am excited. I’d vaguely been aware of the book, but it was my love for Nicola Griffith’s Spear, a brilliant Arthurian novella published earlier this year (my book of 2022 as per this roundup, and you can read my full review of it here) that made me pull the trigger and dive in. Published 2013, this historical novel is based on the early life of Hild of Whitby, a seventh-century saint and abbess of the monastery of Whitby, mainly known thanks to the work of the Venerable Bede in the eight century. Nicola Griffith’s Hild has deservedly become a classic of its genre.
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