The Northmen come on raids to the Green Isle and all the peaceful farming tribes have had to learn to be warriors. In 834, a ship brings fresh raiders to Wexford. EIRE'S VIKING is among them. Agnarr Halvardson isn't keen on warfare any more, but he needs the plunder. In a monastery nearby, a local girl called Aisling, trained in healing, tends to injuries among the people. Her relative Prince Cowan arrives with an injured man after a raid. This is Agnarr, and by rights he should have been left to die.
Agnarr comes around in a place he doesn't know where the people speak a foreign language. The girl tending him seems to know her business, so he says little and waits his chance. Striped sails are spotted on the shore. Agnarr hears the alarm and heads for the water. But Aisling throws caution to the winds and follows her patient, hoping to bring him back before that head wound gets worse.
The tale follows the small detail of daily life, bringing the surroundings vividly to the reader. We learn about the healing herbs, spinning and ongoing tensions. Danes and Norse both raid in Ireland and some are looking for land to settle on, an easier living than in their own countries. Resentment of such would-be settlers runs high. Not all thieves are from other shores, while the monks may be forbidden to shed blood but are willing to take up cudgels in defence of the monastery. Nobody trains like the Vikings, though.
The author Sandi Layne explains that she is writing a trilogy which encapsulates the gradual process of arrival, settlement and absorption of the Norse into the Irish. Each adventure and romance shows a part of the tale. Having previously read Eire's Moon I found this second part of the Eire's Viking Trilogy a good fit, with many of the same elements, and a rousing tale of culture clash and spirited people. The grudging respect and mutual admiration of the different characters grows stronger through the story and EIRE'S VIKING is an understated romance which gives us plenty of time to absorb the other aspects. While young adult readers could read this tale it is not written with them in mind and will best suit adults who enjoy historical adventures and romances.
Beginning ten years after the end of Éire’s Captive Moon, this is the story of how Agnarr Halvardson returns to Éire with the intention of settling there, marrying, and siring sons. It is also the story of Aislinn, who was a child in Ragor when the Northmen raided eleven summers prior but is now a working physician in her own right. She spent a year in Bangor Monastery and became a Christian before Cowan and Charis returned to take the children to Cowan’s village in the kingdom of Dál Fiatach and returns there a decade later to finish learning all she can from the monks about their healing practices. When Cowan brings her a patient, injured and temporarily unable to speak, she can’t help but find the strong, tall man attractive, even if such feelings unsettle her. Although sparks fly immediately, Agnarr’s idea of wedding Aislinn—the physician who heals him when he is injured—is hampered by many factors, including language and cultural differences. There is also the matter that he is the man who kidnapped and enslaved Charis years before. Believing strongly that God gave Agnarr to her as a patient, though, Aislinn does her best. Her knowledge of who he is wars with her unwilling attraction to him. That he makes his interest in her clear doesn’t help, as he goes so far as to seek her father’s permission to wed her. Can she forgive him for what he did to her village? Can she love him if she does? And will she be willing to accept a life at Agnarr’s side even if he does not love her?
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