pagesofjulia

Thanks to Katy at A Few More Pages for hosting this meme. To participate, share the first line or two of the book you are currently reading and, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line.

I am loving Sharon Kay Penman these days.

This is the first in the Welsh trilogy. My experience with this author actually started with The Reckoning, the third in the same, so I’m out of order, but no matter. Here are two beginnings for you today; between them, they set the book up very nicely.

From the prologue:

Theirs was a land of awesome grandeur, a land of mountains and moorlands and cherished myths. They called it Cymru and believed themselves to be the descendants of Brutus and the citizens of ancient Troy.

And from Book 1, Chapter 1: Shropshire, England, July 1183:

He was ten years old and an alien in an unfriendly land, made an unwilling exile by his mother’s marriage to a Marcher border lord. His new stepfather seemed a kindly man, but he was not of Llewelyn’s blood, not one of the Cymry, and each dawning day in Shropshire only intensified Llewelyn’s heartsick longing for his homeland.

And so it begins. Stay tuned for my review, tomorrow.

Filed under: book beginnings | Tagged: epic, historical fiction |