bunn

Kathleen Herbert wrote a selection of fascinating academic books about interesting topics - Women in Early English Society, Lost Gods of England, English Heroic Legends. All of these are topics where the available evidence is, like the books, a bit slim, but she packs what information there is in and they make a nice change from the usual endless ecclesiastical stuff that fills books about Anglo Saxon England.

So, when I discovered she had also written some historical novels set in seventh century Northumbria and Mercia, I was really keen to read them. These are : Queen of the Lightning, and the sequel, Ghost in the Sunlight.
( Apparently I had a very great deal to say about these rather obscure books. )

When I am reading I have this horrible habit of being caught by incidental detail, and thinking 'hang on, that's wrong, isn't it'? My brain then hares off after that detail and loses the plot.

Last time I read through A Song of Ice and Fire, I was taken by the remarkable fatness of Samwell Tarly, which persists despite military training and rations, forced marches, seasickness, and lack of money.

This time I read it, I noted that Ser Wylis Manderly is apparently stricken by the same remarkable problem: despite the stresses and strains of riding to war, battle, being taken and held prisoner for some considerable while in a situation where the prisoners are driven to cannibalism, he's *still* fat when released. How odd.

I also wondered about Ser Ilyn Payne and Victarion's tongueless bedwench. Neither of them is able to talk at all, because their tongues have been removed. Yet, surely, the ability to speak is not entirely tongue-based? Admittedly it is hard to pretend you don't have a tongue, but I reckon that quite a few consonants are shaped entirely by the lips, and removing the tongue surely would not damage the vocal chords? It would certainly render someone hard to understand, but surely not completely silent...?