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| Renegade by Robyn Young |
It detailed many of the more interesting events that took place during the lifetime of Robert Bruce and I am sure you will be moved by the way the author has presented them.
While I thought the book was a good read, I have to admit it read differently to the first one, Insurrection. I would even go so far as to say it was dramatically different. So dramatically different that I believe many of the people I know who did not like Insurrection may find Renegade better suited to them.
It is no secret amoung my fellow bookworms. I fell in love with Insurrection. I cherished the power of the detail and the way I could feel Scotland on every page. While on the flip side, friends were finding fault in the same book. Saying that they think it lacked female characters and that the more personal drama of Robert's life was skipped over.
In this book I trust they will find what they had missed in book one, for the women have a strong presence and are explored to much greater length. While the connections between the men and the women are delved and kept relevant throughout.
To those who have inquired after my opinion of the book as I read it, I have tried to define what it is that I found so different about Renegade compared to Insurrection and this is what I came up with.
I feel Renegade was written more for those who read with their feminine side. Although I am a woman myself I read with my masculine side and, therefore, love-stories, melodrama and personal interactions between characters are not important to me when I read. It is not that I love battles, because I don't. I enjoy a good battle scene if it matches the book, but I hate battle-centric or gore-centric historical fiction.
Whether Robyn Young realised she had written Renegade differently to Insurrection, or whether it was planned based on feedback after Insurrection came out, or whether it happened of its own accord and the author wasn't aware, it doesn't matter. It was still a good book. The story is still done well and there are plenty of scenes that got my blood pumping.
I will recommend - to those who read book one and noticed a lack of female influence and missed a more up close and personal relationship with the characters - that they go on and read this one. It is the book I think they wanted Insurrection to be, or, in the very least, it is the book that includes some of those elements that they thought lacking in the first.
I must express though, that I did not find the first one lacking in any way. It became one of my favourite historical fictions and I will always treasure my copy of Insurrection.
As for me and the trilogy. I will await book three in 2014 with anticipation. I look forward to seeing what Robyn Young does with the finale of the Robert Bruce story. I am sure, even reading with my masculine side as I do, I will still perhaps shed a tear to see this trilogy come to an end.
- MM
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