I started this book back on September 15th. It’s in translation from Polish, and I’d be curious to see if it’s as dense in that language as in English. I had to take long pauses between readings. Honestly, I usually dump a book by now with pauses this long in between, but I really did enjoy this book.
This is the fictionalized account of Swietoslawa, a Polish princess, who ends up being a queen, and mother to two kings. What I really liked about this book is the setting in eastern Europe – being an English speaker definitely sets you up for English heavy historical fiction, and it was really nice to visit some other lands. While the Slavic countries are here, Swietoslawa marries into Scandinavian royalty, so this is an interesting window into the Viking activity in Europe at this time when Christianity was starting to move north (so England does make an appearance on the side).
If you like historical fiction, and want to read something a little different, I definitely recommend this book, though I was very annoyed to find out it was not standalone, and I’ll need to track down the second book of the series to see how everything lands in the end.