Elizabeth Trail

Deserves TEN stars

Revisado: 10-09-22

I'm on my third listen and still discovering profound new insights. I need to own this book in print -- and I don't say that often.

Memoir is my favorite genre, so sheep and sheepdogs and the Lake District sounded perfect -- James Herriot from the farmer's point of view. But as someone who lives in and loves my own rural place, without being truly "hefted" here (you'll understand when you've listened to the book), I was immediately caught up in James Rebank's central question -- how different groups of people develop a sense of "ownership" of a place, a landscape, based on their own expectations and experiences there. The 18th and 19th century artists and poets romanticized the Lake District. Hikers and tourists have made it their own. Teachers (at least the ones Rebanks encountered at the local comprehensive in his day), counted their successes as the students who escaped to other places. And yet, the Lake District is a working landscape -- created by centuries of farmers and livestock interacting with the land. So if there is a question of who holds claim to the "real" Lake District (and sometimes there is), Rebanks argues persuasively that title goes to the forgotten centuries of nameless farmers and shepherds, who cleared the fields, planted the hedgerows, and patiently built and rebuilt the endless miles of stone walls, a few feet every year.

The autobiography and the sheep stories are just the backdrop of a profound and multifaceted consideration of place, community, and what constitutes a life worth living. The story of how the author went from dropout to Oxford would be fascinating if he was at all impressed. He's not. The main thing he got from university, from his point of view, was the ability to earn enough money to keep his farm going another generation. And yet, how much of his keen awareness of the forces brought to bear on his beloved way of life does he owe to his education?

Anyway, an amazing book. The narrator does just what he should -- reads well and convincingly, and stays out of the way of the story.

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Excellent but uncomfortably dated

Revisado: 07-23-22

A gripping and otherwise brilliantly written story, marred for me by some really uncomfortable sexism and casually insensitive use of racial terms. I realize that the book is a product of its times, written in 1969. But endless references to the "girl ranger" and "female hysteria" are really jarring. (The men don't always acquit themselves well, but their actions don't seem to need to be explained with gender-based assumptions).

And while mentioning that a particular man is a native American might be fine in the first instance, continually calling him "the Indian" in the narrative was completely unnecessary and irrelevant.

I was teenager in 1969, and this is the culture I grew up in. In a way, it's encouraging to be reminded of how far we have come as a society over the past 50 years. But why not do a quick edit and remove the gratuitous references so that this story can be appreciated for another 50 years? The events themselves are gripping, and the lessons about the difficulties of managing the human wildlife interface in our national parks are still relevant.

There are a number of other intriguing Jack Olson books in the audible catalog, some written in the 1980s so I would hope are much improved, but I am really hesitant to pay money to find out!

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Liked it but never really got to know Emma

Revisado: 02-20-22

As with the previous books in this series, this is a good effort at telling the story of Emma of Normandy. It was more vivid than a history. But somehow, we never quite really get inside Emma's skin or feel the realities of life in the 11th century.

I did appreciate the author's note at the end, explaining how she went about reconciling the logical discrepancies among the few historical references to Emma.

I'm glad I bought the series and listened to it. I knew very little about this era of English history, other than the names in the history books. but it won't go down as one of my all time favorites.

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Good but not utterly compelling

Revisado: 02-12-22

Perhaps it is the misfortune of this series that I am listening to it not long after finishing the incredible Boudica series by Manda Scott. In comparison, this is a little flat. We don't get deep enough into Emma's skin. The villains are a little too villainous, the good ones a bit flat. Emma makes decisions, often courageous ones, but we never quite get into her head.

Of course as with any historical fiction set this far back in time, Emma's personality and those around her are necessarily the author's creations. So private conversations (and as far as I know, the side romance with her same-age step son, Aethelstan) are made up. Still, it brings alive a period of history that I haven't visited before. I'm looking forward to the next books in the series and planning to turn to historical sources to find out more.


The narrator was good, but I don't understand the inconsistencies in her pronunciation of names. It's not just that her pronunciation evolves as she becomes more comfortable. She will pronounce Aethelred three different ways in a page or two, and never settles into a single pronunciation. I had to go back and start over after I got halfway through, because I had missed some important backstory for this reason.

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Fabulous series

Revisado: 05-12-21

Love the series, I'm listening through for the second time and it does not disappoint. The cruelty and violence are painful, but so is life. The Celtic culture described shows an unflinching pragmatism, but also deep love for family and a dedication to their spiritual beliefs which are interwoven into everything they do. I find myself wanting to live in that world, at least in peace time before the Romans came. Yes, there was strife between tribes, and it was clearly a warrior culture. But also a culture that had time for art and story and music. We mourn along with the characters as tribal culture and language suffer upheaval and irreplaceable loss. Prosperity vanishes as all of the able-bodied leave the villages to join in the fight. And environmental destruction begins as people who once lived in balance with the resources available to them are forced to cultivate more land and cut more forest to satisfy Roman taxation quotas.

Manda Scott writes vividly, sometimes slowing time to instant after instant in slow motion, as happens in life and death situations. Her writing is superb, but what makes it special Is the human values that form the core of the story.

But I simply do not understand the narration. I loved the first version of the first book, and would have been perfectly happy to continue through the series with a single narrator. but I was willing to try the multiple narrator approach. And in fact had no choice, because the second third and fourth books were only recorded with the triple narrators. However, they must have sent them all to the same voice coach. There is a hard edge, almost a truculence, to the tone, and an intake of breath before the pronunciation of each tribal name, that is the same from narrator to narrator. It makes it sound as though The character through whose eyes we are seeing the story is endlessly uncomfortable with the names, vocabulary, and geography that would have been second nature to them. I try not to let it bother me, but I notice it.

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The gold standard for historical fantasy

Revisado: 05-06-21

Dreaming the Eagle is the first of a four part saga about the Boudica (not a name, but a Celtic title meaning "bringer of victory" or "she who brings victory").

The series sets the standard for the genre.... a world and characters so perfectly imagined and fully realized, that, despite knowing how slender the historical record and archaeological evidence are for life in Celtic Britain at the time of the Roman invasion, I came away with the feeling that this must be the way it all unfolded.


Although there is no record of the Boudica's early life, or of her involvement in the defense of Britain against the Roman invasion in 43 AD, the author argues persuasively that the woman who led the revolt against the Roman occupation in 61 AD must have had an established history as a warrior and leader. So the fictional Breaca shows early prowess as a warrior, and over the course of this first book becomes the war leader of the tribes despite her wish to be a "Dreamer", or druid priestess. The parallel story is that of her brother Bàn, born to be a Dreamer, but forced through twists of fate to become a warrior who painfully betrays his own people.

We know little of the actual druid religion, despite modern revivals and interpretations. In this recreation, as in more recent shamanistic cultures, the gods are real and close, a part of everyday life. Spirituality permeates people's lives. Reality can be shaped through trance-like dream states, and the gods are appeased by a combination of strict adherence to their laws, and by sacrifice, major and minor.

This creates an element of fantasy, reminiscent of The Mists of Avalon, where happenings push the envelope of being strictly explicable as the outcomes of the characters' beliefs. In that way, Dreaming the Eagle walks the line between historical fiction and fantasy.
The history is meticulously researched and where the facts are questionable or unknown, the author has drawn reasonable inferences from the archaeological and documentary evidence that does exist. She explains some of these choices, and the evidence she used, in a detailed author's note.


This is definitely not a book for the squeamish. As a veterinarian, author Manda Scott can describe battle gore in excruciating detail. But like any good novel, it reaches for wider themes... love in all its forms, society and belonging, and what constitutes a good life. Dreaming the Eagle is much more than a rousing epic of conquest and defiance. Apart from the history, this is an incredible novel and series, a believable imagination of Celtic Britain, as the tribes fight to preserve their way of life against the Roman legions.

I rate the narration a bit lower than the novel itself -- learning to say even difficult tribal names smoothly should not be too much to ask of a professional narrator. Liza Goddard handles it by taking a deep breath before the hard words, which makes no sense because she is speaking from the point of view of people who have grown up within the language. And Philip Stevens, the main male reader, chunks up each sentence, emphasizing words in a way that sounds almost truculent. I actually prefer Josephine Bailey's interpretation in the original recording of this book, but since she doesn't read any of the subsequent books, I went ahead and bought the whole series with the multiple narrators as well. Jerome Flynn does a wonderful bard-like introduction, but we only get to hear him for the first 3 minutes of each book.

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esto le resultó útil a 6 personas

gripping material, so-so writing

Revisado: 04-28-21

very clinical, lots of information, but after a while I just didn't care all that much

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Couldn't stop listening

Revisado: 04-25-21

Macabre fascination? Voyeurism? Or starting to come to grips with something we all need to think about.

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great book, great reading, bad job remastering

Revisado: 04-22-21

To me, Christopher Timothy is the voice of James Herriot. so there was no question in my mind but that I would choose his reading of the classic. But when they remastered the original audio, they inexplicably added musical interludes. Not just between chapters, but sometimes, inexplicably, right in the middle of the chapter. Even when it meant interrupting the logical flow of action. There are also some odd continuity jumps and fade outs mid-sentence that aren't there on my well abused cassette tapes from the 1980s. I have no idea what's going on or how this got past quality control.

I'm not going to return the book because I love it too much. But I do think that if Audible were to fix the problems on these remastered recordings (which have been mentioned in many reviews), they should send out a replacement offer to everyone who has bought this version.

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esto le resultó útil a 2 personas

Fantastic book

Revisado: 07-27-20

I listened to this after enjoying the television series so much. This is more documentary, historic narrative interwoven with excerpts from letters and journals. It is not a novel. So it might not be everyone's cup of tea. In fact, I might even suggest watching the television series first, and then listening to this for the background information (and in some cases the true story behind the dramatized version.)

Several people have mentioned not liking the narrator. I did find her voice took a little getting used to, in part because of her accent (I'm American), and in part because her delivery is soft, low, and slow. (I'm also a studio artist and listen while I work, so sometimes lose chunks of a book while concentrating on a process.) I started over three times, and then all of a sudden it clicked and I was fine for the rest of the book. By the end, I thought her voice was one of the audio book's great assets. Somehow by stepping back and not dramatizing with her voice, the drama of the narrative becomes front and center. I give her four stars only to warn people that they may need to work a little at first.

I expect to re-listen to this book at some point in the future. Really excellent.

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