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The Wicked And The Just (2012)

by J. Anderson Coats(Favorite Author)

3.64 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

0547688377 (ISBN13: 9780547688374)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

review 1: A very interesting read - very much a "seeing both sides" tale. The book takes place in the late 13th century in Wales, shortly after Wales lost its independence. The story focuses on two young women - one English, one Welsh - and how they see the world very differently. Our English protagonist comes to Wales from Coventry with a lot of prejudice against the Welsh people - and it's compounded by other English people she interacts with once she arrives in Wales. Our Welsh protagonist sees all English the same way - as the people that took her family, her home, her birthrights. You could easily draw parallels to modern day America and abroad - where different ethnic groups live together, but not happily. Where one group considers themselves superior (by language, religion... more or birthright) to those that live with them. This book is based on actual events, with fictionalized characters. I've been trying to learn a bit of Welsh so that I can record this book and pronounce things correctly, but it's quite a challenging language! DD, FF and LL are *not* pronounced the way my brain wants to pronounce them :-)
review 2: This was a surprisingly great read. The language was off-putting at first (especially given that I really hate anything historical) but about 20 pages in a found myself getting into the groove of the story & laughing out loud - a lot. The plot begins fairly light-hearted but really climaxes 200 pages in & once the rebellion hits & so many lives are lost I actually questioned whether this was too intense a read for a pre-teen. Pretty sophisticated themes re: justice, racism of sorts, tolerance, servitude, poverty, etc. great alternating between narrators (& gwinny's speech change over the course of the book). Still unsure of audience though. Also several fairly disturbing references & scenes devoted to sex / sexual references. less

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