Dunstan
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Average rating2.5
In the year 937, King Aethelstan, grandson of Alfred the Great, readies himself to throw a great spear into the north. His dream of a kingdom of all England will stand or fall on one field and the passage of a single day. At his side is Dunstan of Glastonbury, full of ambition and wit, perhaps enough to damn his soul. His talents will take him from the villages of Wessex to the royal court, to the hills of Rome - from exile to exaltation. Through Dunstan's vision, by his guiding hand, England may come together as one great country - or fall back into anarchy and misrule ... From one of our finest historical writers, Dunstan is an intimate portrait of a priest and performer, a visionary, a traitor and confessor to kings - the man who changed the fate of England.
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I felt like Dunstan promised more than he delivered. I think the main problem with his point of view was that he was not that good at depicting the relationships he had with people. Perhaps this was deliberate to depict him as being a heartlessly arrogant man who misjudged his own importance but throwaway comments about still remembering Edmund and them being mates didn't really stand up to the scenes with him. It was almost like this was supposed to be a series that got squashed into one book so we just whizzed past a parade of kings with similar names. I don't want to be too harsh as I haven't read anything else by the author, but I found it difficult not to compare it unfavourably to the Ken Follett cathedral building books. On the plus side, it seemed well-researched with good period detail. It just didn't entirely hold my attention.
