I am already a huge fan of Susanna Kearsley's book and thought I had read them all. Then I discovered this earlier book of hers published in 1998. It is not rated as high on here as some of her others, but it just happened to be the right book for me! So five stars because I could not put it down last night until one this morning and could not wait until evening today to finish it. And as I always do with this author's books, I enjoyed every minute I was in it. Even in her books that were not favorites, I still just like being in the world she pulls me into. Most of her books involve time travel and thus history. No time travel here and it was a bit more of a mystery than the others I have read. It had a tiny bit of a feel of Mary Stewart's books here and there.So what made it special for me? I am a huge fan of the Arthur legend and of the medieval times in Europe. The setting for this book is in Wales at a rather secluded coastal village in present time. It is a land of legend, the ruins of ancient castles, and of superstition. A Christmas vacation time brings Lyn, a literary agent for a very large company, and one of her clients, the very eccentric and self centered Bridget, headed to Wales. Bridget has written a series of very famous children's books, and the trip is to spend the holiday with Bridget's current man in her life, another famous author, James. He lives with his brother in a castle like home. Lyn would like to sign James as a client, but is not going to push the issue when a guest at his home. Her company wants her to sign a reclusive famous playwright who also lives in the village. But these are side issues to the story.Backtracking a bit, Lyn, is a widow who had a baby boy after her husband's death and the baby died soon after birth. She does not mourn the husband, but has not gotten past losing the child four years earlier. She is tortured by nightmares where she is clutching a child and running from a dragon. It is her dreams and the coincidences that go along with them that brings us into legends and even Merlin.I have read some reviews of this book where the readers were disappointed in the characters or are Kearsley fans but did not like this book as well as the others. I can't say that for me. I did find Bridget pretty irritating, but that was the point of her character. She was a difficult demanding person to be around. I had trouble tagging it because it is a mystery. I really did not understand the dreams, the Arthur legend implications, the reason why a young mother renting part of the large house from Lyn's host and his brother was having some of the same dreams as Lyn was having. But that is not a mystery like a crime story. I tagged it as romance, but the romance is very subtle and does not really become open until the end. And speaking of the end, I did not have very much book left to read when I wondered how in the world this author was going to wind this up and have it make sense in so few pages. But she did!I could tell about the other characters in the book, but I don't like to do spoilers. Besides the people, there is a Jack Russell named Chance and a beautiful black mare too. It is a light read that put me in a really feel good world with a touch of paranormal, a bit of medieval history (which made me smile every time a tidbit of something I have read elsewhere or seen a movie came into the story). The writing is definitely the Susanna Kearsley that I love. I need to look around and see if there is something else out there that I have not found by this author.
My fourth Kearsley novel and though it didn't live up to Marianna or The Winter Sea, it was nevertheless an excellent thriller to the end. I certainly didn't see the ending coming, which is always nice, so often it's easy to guess where a book is going, this one kept me thinking right to the end.Lynette Ravenshaw accepts an invitation from Bridget Cooper, one of the author's she represents at the literary agency she works for, to spend Christmas holidays with her and her boyfriend James Swift in Angle, Pembrokeshire. Lyn accepts, and is happy to meet James an author she really appreciates, especially as she is given the opportunity to sign James for her literary agency from the one he is currently with. One of the things I really like about Kearsley's novels is her ability to set the scene, to describe the countryside in which her tales are told; she makes an area come alive. I have never visited this part of Wales, yet she makes it real, especially her description of Pembroke Caslte and the surrounding area (but then, I like Castles!).As the story unfolds, we learn that Lyn was unsuccesfully married and was more relieved than grief stricken when she learned her husband had died in a car crash - her grief is more for the loss of her son Justin as a newborn baby, and Kearsley's description of this loss is heartbreaking. Every night, Lyn suffers the same dream about the loss of her baby, until that is the first night at the farm in Angle, when her dream changes, and a lady in a blue dress asks her to take care of her small son.A neighbour at the farm is Elen, also a young widow, with a baby son Stevie - Elen is convinced that Stevie is in some kind of danger from the dragon, and that her friend Margaret has told her that Lyn will become Stevie's protector. Is Margaret the same lady as the lady in a blue dress that Lyn sees in her dreams (the Lady Margaret Beaufort mother of Henry Tudor), who is threatening Elen and young Stevie, and what have the prophecies of Merlin to do with the story?As Lyn and Bridget settle in to their holiday, they meet the playwright Gareth Morgan, a write Lyn really rates, but he is rude and arrogant towards her, believing she is at first a journalist - he is fiercly protective of his privacy - and later that she has been sent by her literary agency to try and sign him to their books. But, he is also one of Elen and Stevie's biggest defenders, and he can help Lyn with unravelling local history, the prophecies of Merlin and the story of Henry Tudor.I found the history intriguing as I usually do in a Kearsley novel, and the hints at Stevie being a reincarnation of Arthur fascinating. I was pleased to see Kearsley use the tale of Merlin as a young boy and his meeting with Vortigern in this book, the same tale told in her novel The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart, who I believe is an influence on Kearsley's novels.A thoroughly enjoyable novel, which I will certainly read again at some point:-)
What do You think about Named Of The Dragon (1999)?
Set in Wales, Named of the Dragon is probably Kearsley's most suspenseful novel to date.Literary agent Lyn Ravenshaw agrees to spend the Christmas holiday with her client Bridget, a children's book author. Bridget has invited Lyn to Wales, where she is spending Christmas with James Swift, an author represented by another agent. Bridget incites Lyn to accompany her by dropping a few hints that Swift is not happy with his current agent and Lyn jumps at the chance. In Wales, Lyn meets their neighbor, a young widow named Elen who has a young son. Between Lyn having strange dreams of a mysterious woman telling her to protect her son, to Elen telling her that she, Lyn, is her son's protector, Lyn feels that there is something odd about. Lyn, who is mourning the loss of her own baby, who died a few years ago, gets upset around babies and small children, constantly haunted by thoughts of her own.Also while there, Lyn comes across Gareth Morgan, a reclusive playwright who thinks that Lyn is down there to try to snag him as a client. So, there's instant tension and the two don't get along so well. Things get weird when Elen keeps mentioning that a dragon from the nearby tower is trying to steal her child. Everyone thinks Elen is off her rocker, but Lyn starts wondering if there isn't some truth to it. Something strange is definitely going on. And as time goes on, Lyn also starts to figure out what her dreams with the mysterious woman mean. Named of the Dragon definitely has my favorite hero. Well, I guess he's sort of an anti-hero, I'm not sure. He's definitely the brooding type, sort of like Heathcliff, but not completely mental. And the suspense was spot-on combined with a unique setting. A great suspense novel.
—Christy B
Silly story: when I finished The Winter Sea, I thought, darn, I really want a story by Kearsley that is set in Wales, in that landscape, which I love and feel part of. Because she does a great job with landscape, with the feelings it can invoke, but Scotland or Cornwall aren’t my landscapes.Then I remembered I had already got a couple of chapters into Named of the Dragon. Suffice it to say that the landscape was satisfactory, and I would probably have felt homesick had I read this when not in Wales. Particularly at the bit with the lovely little chapel, St Govan’s — I’ve meant to go there for a while, because of the Gawain link, and this reminded me.I’m not sure why I stopped at that point, before; while I adore the Welsh and Arthurian aspects of this book, it might have been the characters that didn’t work for me. Mostly the supporting characters: Elen, with her Arthurian fantasy; Bridget, with her flirtations and lack of remorse over basically planning to cheat on her partner; Christopher, with the general veneer of charm that lacked the warmth of (I couldn’t help but make the comparison) Stuart in The Winter Sea. I enjoy Kearsley’s books, but sometimes the supernatural links are too tenuous for me, or rather, too tenuously explained, too tangential to the actual emotional plot.Because really, it doesn’t matter if Elen and her baby are really somehow related to Igraine and Arthur. What matters is the main character’s gradual acceptance of her own child’s death, her ability to finally put it aside and belong in the present, and help someone else. It doesn’t matter if Gareth and Lyn are somehow linked back to Gareth and Lynette, because their relationship is all their own anyway (and let’s face it, Lyn’s not half as nasty as Lynette, and this Gareth is at least twice as nasty as Fairhands).I was glad that the romance wasn’t laid on too thick, here. There’s hope, potential, but nothing certain. If the book had been longer, more would have been okay, but for the length and where the story stopped, it was right to stop at that moment of potential.Originally posted here.
—Nikki
I read this quite quickly over a few days, the bulk of it on Christmas day because the book itself takes place in the weeks before Christmas so it felt fitting. I've read a few by Susanna Kearsley (Author) by now so I've come to expect the supernatural aspects; how interesting, then, that in this one the supernatural element—the heroine being warned/coached in dreams—turned out to be something of a red herring. It really nothing to do with what was actually happening in real life in the current-day plotline, and it was never explained. It was almost like a distraction, when all was said and done. Still, this one was much more Mary Stewart-like, even, than the other SKs I've read, so all in all it was a worthy diversion.
—Alyson
