Overview

"Named to ""Kirkus Reviews'"" Best of 2012. Silver Prize Winner, 2012 ""ForeWord Clarion"" Book of the Year Awards, Historical Fiction. ""Exile"", the first novel in the historical fiction series ""The Chronicles of Iona"", is the story of the two men who laid the foundations of the Scottish nation, an Irish monk, Saint Columba, and a Scottish warlord, Aedan mac Gabran. They were a real-life sixth-century Merlin and King Arthur and their story has never been told. It is 563 A.D. The world has been plunged into chaos by the collapse of the Roman Empire and barbarian invasions: civilization holds on by a thread. Columba, a powerful abbot and prince of Ireland, is exiled for a violent act to the pagan colony of Dalriada on the west coast of Scotland. Awaiting him there is Aedan mac Gabran, the down-and-out second son of the colony's previous king, slain by the bloodthirsty Picts. Together, this unlikely pair travels the breadth of a lawless, divided realm, each in search of his own kind of unity. Their path is fraught with blood feuds, lost love, sacrifice, miracles, dark gods, and monsters. Beset on all sides, their only hope is to become allies-and to forge a daring alliance with the pagan Picts. How Columba overcame exile and a crisis of faith to found the famous monastery of Iona (one of the greatest centers of learning in Dark Age Europe) and, from it, the Celtic Church in the British Isles; and how Aedan avenged his father's death and became, against all odds, the progenitor of Scottish kings and the greatest warlord of his age, begins here. For both, what begins as a personal imperative becomes a series of events that lead to the foundation of Iona and the kingdom of Scotland-events that literally change the world. Historically authentic yet told with a bold fictional sweep, ""The Chronicles of Iona: Exile"" plunges the reader into the world of sixth-century Scotland and Ireland, the veritable Dark Ages-a world on the brink of either collapse or creation, poised between myth and history."

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9781739837549

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Reviews

"""While the term 'epic' is too often casually bandied about, there is no doubt that this series is deserving of that epithet. With elegant and lyrical writing, de Fougerolles has composed a thrilling and fast-paced journey that ... will appeal to fans of Bernard Cornwell, George R.R. Martin and any who enjoy stories of King Arthur or the Dark Ages."" ForeWord Clarion Reviews ""Vivid, brutal and beautiful."" Kirkus Reviews ""Probably the best book on the Dark Ages I've read, certainly the best informed."" Simon Young, author of 'A.D. 500' and 'Farewell to Britannia'"

Author Information

Paula de Fougerolles has a Ph.D. from the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic, University of Cambridge, and has taught and published in the field. She has lived and traveled extensively throughout Scotland and Ireland, including a prestigious year-long Thomas J. Watson Fellowship in which she criss-crossed Europe in search of the physical remains of the so-called 'Dark Ages'--research which ultimately led to this award-winning historical fiction series.

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