The Princes of Ireland

 

The Princes of Ireland – by Edward Rutherford

I’m reading all of Edward Rutherford’s novels sequentially.  So since this is his fifth book, it’s the fifth I’ve read.  This one has, by far, been my favorite.  The reason is fairly simple: in this book, he lets the story breathe.

What do I mean by that?  Well, Rutherford’s books are about historical places.  He then goes through the long history of the place, yet tells various stories of the people who actually inhabit the geography.  It’s a great way to be told a story and at the same time learn a bit of history.  His main fault that I have observed though, is that it’s very difficult for him to pack 2,000 years (or more) of history within one book, while telling stories throughout.  In some instances, he would feature one story that was 90 pages or so, and yet it covered 90 years of history.  So we would read 25-30 pages as we were slowly being introduced and interested in the main characters, and then the story would (had to) quickly jump 30-40 years in the narrative a couple of times. It can be awfully complex to enjoy the scenery when the vehicle was moving this fast.

Whether or not it was intentional, he doesn’t try to cram so much into this book. I should also point out that this is actually the first of a two-book series.  You have to wonder if he originally contemplated stuffing both books into one? Thankfully, that isn’t the case.  Even though there is roughly 1,000 years of Ireland’s early history here (from about 500 AD to 1500 AD), Rutherford doesn’t feel obligated to cover the entire 1,000 years.   I recall there may have only been 5 stories or so included, so it was much more enjoyable for your brain to assimilate everything.

As with most of Rutherford’s books, he inserts real historical people in the pages.  Some are literally in the stories, such as St. Patrick and Brian Boru.  Others aren’t included in the story, but their historical presence was so strong in the background, that we read their heavy influence on our fictitious characters.  One such example in this book is England’s King Henry VIII.

Like all of Rutherford’s books, as the time changes, the new characters in the newer stories are all related to the ones we’ve read about in the earlier narratives.  Rutherford includes a nice family tree in the book in case one wants to keep track. To be honest, I’m one of those individuals who doesn’t recall much of the details and characters in the earlier stories once I’ve become engaged in a latter narrative.  Rutherford tries his best to include obvious physical features of his characters that get passed from generation to generation, such as “sharp green eyes”, “fire-like red hair”, or “an imposing eye”. Well, what else can you do in order to emphasize relations?  Again, if you care about such things, the family tree is useful. Word of caution though: sometimes a family tree can give away the ending of the particular story.  If there is a love triangle, for example, and you’re wondering who will actually end up with whom, sneaking a glance at the tree can spoil it for you as it reveals the eventual unions of said individuals as well as their offspring.

I’m guessing there were about four or five families total here, but that really isn’t something that I focused on while reading. As long as the stories were good, then I was happy.  These were overall good, and yes, we learn quite a bit of the early history of Ireland as well, especially centered around Dublin.

So I’m glad he fleshed this one out over two books. I’m also looking forward to reading the sequel “The Rebels of Ireland”.  I’m guessing it’s best to read this one first, but it probably isn’t too much of a drawback if you don’t read the two sequentially.

IMPORTANT NOTE: I’m not sure why, but I’m guessing the author has two different publishers for different geographical areas.  This is crucial because there’s another book out there by Rutherford that has a different title, but it’s the identical book.  I believe the ‘other’ title of this book is called “Dublin”. So just be warned that if you’ve read this book under one of the two titles, don’t make the mistake of buying the exact same book under a different title.   From reading some of the (negative) reviews on Amazon, this obviously happened to a number of people.