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[[Category:New Reviews|Historical Fiction]]__NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->
{{newreview
|author=Chris Priestley
|title=The Last of the Spirits
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Teenage Sam and his little sister Lizzie are starving on the streets of London, which is gripped by terrible cold. Asking an old businessman for money, a man who looks at them with such sheer contempt that Sam's heart fills with hate. He swears that he will seek vengeance and rob the old man, not caring whether his victim will live or die. But before he can do so, a strange spirit appears to him, and warns him about the terrible path he will put himself on with this violent act. Can Sam resist the temptation to gain revenge? Several more spirits show him the possible consequences of his action, as we see Dickens's classic A Christmas Carol from a new viewpoint.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408854139</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|summary=Paul Kingsnorth refers to his Booker-longlisted fiction debut, ''The Wake'', as 'a post-apocalyptic novel set 1000 years in the past'. This ambitious story traces the three-year Ely resistance movement that followed the Norman Conquest. The guerrilla fighters were led by a figure named Hereward the Wake – thus the title. The first thing any review must note is the language: set in 1066-8, this historical novel is written in what Kingsnorth calls a 'shadow tongue' or 'pseudo-language', not quite the Old English you encountered reading Chaucer or ''Beowulf'' at school, but similar. I would strongly recommend that any diligent reader start by perusing the partial glossary and 'A Note on Language', both appended at the end of the text.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908717866</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview <!-- 26/8 -->
|title=The Leopard of Dramoor
|author=P De V Hencher
|rating=4
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Stephen, Earl of Northumbria, known to popular legend as the Leopard of Dramoor, is past his best fighting days. But warfare is never far away in medieval England, particularly in the border country. And it's not far away now. A combined force of Scottish and French troops are massing and intend to attack one of Stephen's castles. Stephen's son David is captain of the castle but he's spoiled and lazy and his father knows he won't defend it successfully without help. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1493588192</amazonuk>
}}