I've been making a list of them for myself, so we can start proper reading sessions again in Autumn. We have enough favourites to last us all the way through Winter into Spring!
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Today I'd like to introduce you to "The Black Fox Of Lorne".
Due to lack of time I have cut and pasted a review I found on this site.
Vikings & Scotland in the 10th century.
From the flyleaf: “”Now we shall go a-Viking,” Harald Redbeard announced, and so it was that Jan and Brus, Harald’s twin sons, found themselves on the dragon-prowed Raven of the Wind, its striped sails set for the north of England. But storms, ancient enemies of the seafaring Norsemen, swooped down, and in their wake left disaster. Ragnhild, the mother, and her ship were lost, the Raven wrecked on the Isle of Skye, a stronghold of the giant Scot, Began Mor.
And that was how Jan and Brus met Gavin, the Black Fox of Lorne, and began the long journey that was to take them across half the wild land of Scotland, in search of their mother and their father’s murderer.
The story is like a panorama of Scotland in the tenth century after Christ. Loyal clansmen at war with marauding Picts and invading Englishmen; arrogant, powerful lairds – all move through a landscape of heather-topped hills, wind-swept forbidding castles. And among them go the young Norsemen, from croft to castle to battlefield, practicing the clever deception that saved their lives. For no one in this strange land knew that there were two boys, identical in appearance, and by the time the secret was revealed it had served its purpose
We have MANY "Family-isms" that we have taken from this book. Gavin of Lorne has a "silly lip beard", McCrone Big Nose pokes his head in the door of the hut when there is a lovely rabbit stew cooking and says "Meat is it?" ... too many to list. Rich character pictures are painted, the story moves swiftly and builds to an exciting end.
It may be hard to get hold of this book, but do try!!
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