There’d be a good graph of my enjoyment of this – sort of a ‘u’ shape. Started reasonably well – heck, I’m all for a strong female lead! – then fell into that Gemmell pattern of “Oh, let’s base it on the Scottish Highlands, with the not-calling-them-English as the enemy”. Nooooo! Perhaps it just lacks anything of the exotic for me, but I also find it a bit lazy: all of imagination to chose for your setting, and you plonk it in a barely changed version of history. Ack.

However, it did improve, thankfully, and I quite enjoyed the last half. Nothing ‘deep’, but a decent enough distraction.