I’ve had this on my TBR list for quite some time, and like so many books recently, borrowed it because of it’s a novel set in Medieval England and I’m trying to prolong the post-vacation high as long as I can. But to my surprise, I was hooked the minute I started reading Shadow on the Crown and could barely bring myself to put it down. I was pretty sure I was going to like this book, but I didn’t know it would be this much!

The first in the Emma of Normandy series (sadly still incomplete – people who need complete series beware!), Shadow on the Crown starts with Emma being sent from her home in Normandy to become Queen of England. This do not start well, with her husband being much older than her and already having six sons. But Emma is smart and she slowly navigates her way around the court, trying to find her place in this strange foreign land.

While the focus of the story is on Emma, there are four characters telling the tale. The other three are Æthelred, the paranoid king who’s haunted by a secret in his path; Æthelstan, his eldest son; and Elgiva of Northampton, the daughter of one of the most powerful men in the kingdom with royal aspirations of her own. To be honest, my favourite character is still Emma and I don’t quite like Æthelred and Elgiva, but even the more ‘villainous’ characters were developed fully (motivations and all) and I enjoyed reading their sections and finding out what they made of each new development. It’s the relationships that develop between the four main characters that made the book so hard to put down for me.

Shadow on the Crown reminded me of Daughter of the Wolf, which takes place one or two centuries before. But while both Emma and Elfrun, the protagonist of Daughter of the Wolf, are likeable and kind, there’s one big difference between the two: Emma is a lot more politically savvy. While she definitely makes missteps (she’s a teenager when she arrives, although in the book she’s considered old enough to marry and have sons), Emma is a lot more prepared to handle the politics of the royal court than Elfrun was to handle the people in her own domain. That’s probably because of Emma’s upbringing, but I thought it was pretty interesting that two books within a similar time period could have such different protagonists (in terms of capability) and still be readable and believable to me.

Fans of history will want to read the author’s note at the book where she talks about which parts of the books are based in history and which are artistic license, but it may also be helpful to read this synopsis of Emma’s life, also written by Patricia Bracewell, first. I actually confused this Æthelred (Æthelred II, also known as Æthelred the Unready) with the first Æthelred (Æthelred I). It took some time on Wikipedia before I got everything sorted out, so if you want to orientate yourself in history before starting the story, I’d recommend the synopsis + the Wikipedia entries to get a sense of what’s going on in that period of history.

Fans of complete endings might want to hold off on this too. In a way, this is the novel that introduces us to the characters and lets us see how they’re manoeuvring against each other and for their own ends. There are definitely exciting events in the novel, but it’s pretty clear that this is going to the first in a series. I checked Goodreads and the third and final book isn’t out, so you may or may not want to wait for the trilogy to be completed before starting on this.

I’ve got several other books already checked out but I’m definitely going to be returning to this series too. Shadow on the Crown is an addictive historical novel with excellent characters that pulled me into the turn of the 11th Century and I can’t wait to read more of Patricia Bracewell’s take on Emma of Normandy.