After Rome

Starred review from February 25, 2013
Irish author Llywelyn (The Horse Goddess) presents an exceptional novel of 5th century Brittania, weaving impressive historical detail with enlightened and evolving characters. In C.E. 410, the Roman army deserted Brittania (modern-day Great Britain), leaving behind an organized central government, educated elite, and a culture that mimicked Roman fashion, food, architecture, and education. However, many of post-Roman Brittania's civil servants had only "a veneer of Latin sophistication" to go with a Celt's "impetuous temperament." They struggled to govern without Roman leadership; violent Saxon warriors, Picts, and Scoti took advantage of the leadership vacuum, resulting in lawlessness, violence, and death. Llywelyn's narrative follows dissimilar cousins, Cadogan and Dinas, brave, resolute men transformed by hardships caused by larger historical forces. Each man seeks freedom and order within a collapsed society. Cadogan, thoughtful and steady, becomes a reluctant leader with "unasked-for responsibilities," shepherding urban refugees to the forest after their town was burned by Saxons. Rootless Dinas, ambitious and passionate, is a "eader, warlord, wild man," who recruits his own warriors; he dreams of kingship, but becomes a pirate and mercenary. Llywelyn's fine treatment is a tribute to man's survival, personal growth, and resilience in the face of anarchy.

December 15, 2012
Life after Rome is, to say the least, barbaric, especially for those Romano-Celts still trying to make a go of it in fifth-century Albion. Llywelyn focuses on two cousins, Dinas and Cadogan, who develop different survival strategies in the arduous time after the fall of the Roman Empire. Dinas is a schemer with dreams of political power who, it seems, will always land on his feet, while Cadogan is more of a drifter and dreamer who eventually begins to stake out a new community to escape the chaos swirling about. Dinas is also something of a ladies' man, quick to drop women when they no longer suit him. One woman whom for obvious reasons Dinas quickly tires of (she affects an aristocratic demeanor even though she's common-born--and she's something of a shrew) is Quartilla, so he "gives" her to Cadogan, who doesn't quite know what to do with her. Much more important to Dinas--and to the dismay and contempt of Quartilla--is his stallion, largely wild and untamed except to Meradoc, a Celtic horse-whisperer. Cadogan wends his way through the bleak landscape of abandoned cities and back home to Cymru (Wales) to see his irascible father, Vintrex, but the Saxons arrive and put it to the torch. The stories of the two cousins tend to run parallel rather than to intersect each other, so the novel feels as though it doesn't have a center. Llywelyn spins a tale that is interesting rather than riveting, though it is full of the rich "stuff" of this historical period.

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February 15, 2013
As the Roman Empire fractures and crumbles, the island of Britannia is abandoned by its conquerors, who leave a roiling political and social vacuum in their wake. It takes extraordinary men and women to forge a new civilization out of the chaos, and cousins Dinas and Cadogan rise to the challenge. Though the two men couldn't be more different and each pursues a different path toward the ultimate goal, their parallel stories illuminate the dark days of this transition period. As mercurial Dinas chases far-flung dreams of glory, staid Cadogan lays the foundation for a new community. Fifth-century Britain provides a suitably murky backdrop as a fledgling civilization struggles to rise from the ashes. The stage seems set for a possible sequel as the masterful Llywelyn moves across the Irish Sea, turning her talent for historical detailing to ancient England and Wales.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)