![]() ![]() I made it 20 pages before this happened and that's just going too far. ![]() it's a mess) to "understanding every word" in like. Listen, I have already vented to friends about the ridiculousness that is one of the characters going from not recognizing what's being spoken as old irish (it's actually middle irish, or, it's supposed to be if you look at the time period (and it's called middle irish once, in the book, but old irish the rest of the time (.ok it's also called medieval irish and gaelic), but there are some sentences given in irish (before the character who supposedly is now fluent in old irish understands all of it) and they clearly use Old Irish grammatical constructions that are lost in the Middle Irish period so. The book includes a very amusing explanation for why Viking artifacts show up in eastern Canada. During the time of the novel, given the overwhelming military dominance of the Vikings, it couldn't have been clear to anybody that Christianity would so completely supplant Odinism in only a few short years. The real conflict is between Norse and Christian worldviews. One of the Celtic autochthonous deities has a guiding role in the story somewhat akin to Athena's in the Homeric epics but she is poignantly aware that she won't be sticking around for much longer. ![]() The religion of the real Book of Kells is of course Christian, not Celtic, but it was fashioned in a Celtic land where the old religion (if it could be described as such) was fading. I found the book while idly searching online for something on Celtic religion beyond the earnest primers written by its latter-day practitioners. She knows her history and she knows how to spin a compelling yarn. I don't know why the author isn't more well-known than she is. The book is funny and optimistic and if there is a nit, it is that one gets the sense that the author is unable to get truly dark, despite the violence swirling around the main characters. Two late-20th-century individuals time-travel to 10th-century Ireland, and while concerns about timeline paradox are formally raised by the protagonists themselves, it doesn't really prevent them from whole-heartedly jumping into historical events because, of course, despite their carefully cultivated cynical exteriors, they are suckers for courage, justice, friendship, and love. ![]()
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