I was very up and down on this book, which could have been so much more interesting - maybe the structure was the problem, as it was based not always chronologically but on arbitrary categories these various women had been slotted into. That lack of context, along with the many very similar names, made for confusing reading at times.

This wasn't helped either by the issues with the primary material and a lot of sentences with words like 'it seemed...' or 'X was probably...', so that there didn't seem to be a great deal of substance to some of the claims being made. Of course, the women of this time can't all be Æthelflæd and have a lot of verifiable detail about them but even she didn't particularly get a good deal out of this book.

I am so very sorry I did not get this book read in time. Is there a way to submit a review after it has been archived?