Lead Review (A Painted Winter)
- Book: A Painted Winter
- Location: Scotland
- Author: H Barnard
Set specifically in Ancient Britain and modern Scotland, Cirencester, Bath, London, the Antonine Wall
A Painted Winter by H Barnard is a thoroughly enjoyable historical fantasy novel. A young woman wakes, alone, naked and cold, in a snowy stone circle in the Highlands of ancient Britannia. Is she alive or has she passed to the afterlife? She is discovered by local Pictish people, who are shocked by her sudden, unexplained arrival, and see that she is different from them. She is unable to explain how she got there and is suspected of being a spy for the Romans, leading her to fear for her life. She is haunted by nightmares about her past and realises that she must conceal what little she remembers about her previous life, among the Romans in the south, in order to survive among this northern Pictish tribe. She invents a name for herself – Sorsha – and a believable explanation about where she came from, which she hopes will keep her safe.
Among Sorsha’s interrogators are two Pictish brothers who a few years earlier had lost their parents to a raid by the Roman soldiers; their mother disappeared and their father, the king, died. Taran stayed to fight but Brei was torn and fled in a vain attempt to protect his beloved Anwen, thus creating a rift between the young men and casting in doubt any claim that Brei has had to future kingship. Sorsha’s arrival creates difficulties for the tribe: those who support her are risking their lives if she turns out to be a spy, and Anwen is just one of many who are fearful and suspicious of the newcomer. When Sorsha is drawn to restore the health of the king, her powers as a healer become apparent and she gains a grudging acceptance from the female druids, though her skills are kept secret from the rest of the tribe. Sorsha herself is surprised by her new ability and she terrified by the shattering implications it has for her future. The bigger picture is no less threatening: she witnesses human sacrifice, and her own safety is on a knife-edge. Moreover, the tribal elders have received news that the Roman hold on the northern part of their empire can be broken, which throws the community onto a war footing. They begin to recruit allies among neighbouring tribes, from the distant kingdom of Ulster and even Saxon fighters to avenge Roman aggression in the past.
A Painted Winter is book one in the four-part Pictish Conspiracy series, and it is set in the late 4thcentury of the common era. At this time, the Roman occupation of the British Isles was in retreat, and the ancient peoples were keen to restore their right to self-governance. Helena Barnard’s novel weaves imagination and fantasy into her considerable knowledge and research about Roman Britain and the ancient tribes to create an engrossing and believable read. She describes people who are returning to pagan ways, as the influence of Rome declines, with great power belonging to both tribal kings and their druidic leaders. Barnard’s world-building skills include creating terminology used by druids to describe their beliefs, inventing names and outlining the laws and traditions by which the lives of the ancient people were governed, as well as describing the natural world that we are familiar with. The author has plenty of scope to be imaginative, since so little of this period of history was written down, and almost none of it by the people themselves; rather it was described briefly by the Romans before their departure from these islands.
I found the early, scene-setting part of the book engaging and I empathised with Sorsha as she struggled with who to trust among her new community. The natural world around her, the relationships among the tribal members and the druidic traditions are all described in credible detail. This is to the author’s credit, when she is neither British herself not a trained historian, but rather an Australian with a passion for archaeology and researching the past. For me, A Painted Winter really comes to life about halfway through, when Sorsha goes on a quest to find Brei and Taran’s mother, who disappeared during the Roman raids and is thought to have been enslaved. At this point, Sorsha comes into her own and uses her wits and courage to face various challenges along the way. The truth about her earlier life is revealed and the strength of her character in overcoming problems and bettering the lives of those she encounters along the way make her much more three-dimensional and empathetic than the earlier, naturally cautious and self-protective version. (It has to be said though, that the latter Sorsha can only exist because of the carefully laid structure that went before.)
The characters in A Painted Winter are well-drawn and engaging enough to make me want to follow them into their adventures in the later books in the series. Despite my own fascination with the Romans in Britain, I found myself rooting for the ‘barbarian’ Picts, who seemed to be the more civilised people in Barnard’s account! Overall, it is a satisfying read and I look forward to discovering what happens next.
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