Book Seven -- The Reckoning by Sharon Kay Penman

The Reckoning
Sharon Kay Penman
historical fiction
587 pages

And so I come to the end of Penman's Wales books. To be honest, The Reckoning is a bit of a disappointment. It picks up shortly after Falls the Shadow and deals with the conflict between Llewelyn and Edward I (also known as Edward Longshanks) over the ultimate fate of Wales. There's yet another woman involved, Simon de Montfort's daughter Ellen, promised to Llewelyn before her father died.

One of the problems with historical fiction, even if it's not technically a romance, is that the writers want us to believe that each match involving their main characters is a love match. In the first book, Here Be Dragons, there is some real evidence that Llewelyn the Great loved his wife Joanna; in a time when no one would have blamed him for divorcing her after finding her in bed with another man, instead, he welcomed her back into his life. But really, did Simon love his Nell? Did the second Llewelyn love his Ellen? Penman wants us to think so and I'll go with it, but after a while, you have to wonder.

That's not the only problem with the book, in fact, it's not even my major issue with it. My real problem is that it's anti-climactic. Not because I knew Edward was going to win, but more because I don't really find the second Llewelyn as interesting or as passionate as I found Llewelyn the Great or Simon de Montfort in the first two books. Nor is Ellen nearly as interesting as her mother Nell, or her great-aunt Joanna. There are moments when Penman tries to make Edward a sympathetic character, but she never really succeeds. Even the constant flip flopping of Llewelyn's brother Davydd--who went back and forth between siding with Edward and siding with his brother--and the part where pirates capture Ellen--something that really did happen--aren't enough to make the book work for me.

In the end, of course, rocks fall and the Welsh die. Ellen dies in childbirth, Llewelyn dies in battle and Davydd is possibly the first person to have been hung, drawn and quartered. Wales falls to Edward, who went so far as to give Llewelyn's title of Prince of Wales to his son, as all (or at least most) succeeding monarchs have done. In my write up of Falls the Shadow, I said that knowing the end doesn't really matter, and yes, that's true. But you have to have interesting people to get me to want to read the book, to engage me even though I know it'll all end badly. These weren't those people.