Dublin: Foundations (The Princes of Ireland)

by Edward Rutherfurd

Reviewed by Coral

Right off the bat, I'm going to start by saying that I really had trouble getting through this book. It took me well over a month, most of which I spent not reading it at all.

This is a story about Dublin, from the Celtic times, through the time of Saint Patrick, Brian Boru and the Vikings, Strongbow and the invasion by the British, and the time of King Henry VIII. There really isn't much of a plot to summarize, because the book is more like a collection of stories from each of the time periods.

The stories are mostly told from the perspective of ordinary people rather than from the time period's main historical figure - or someone who's closely associated with them - which can be interesting if done right and annoying if done wrong. I think it's mostly done wrong in this book, because I never really got a feel for the grander, epic scheme that I think the author was going for. Which is probably because I really didn't like the author's style of writing. Something about it turned me off on the book from the very beginning. At certain parts of the books it's too formal feeling, at others it's too much of an omniscient narrator.

Because, for the most part, I just found the book to be boring and bland, I was planning on grading it a C. But because of the very disgusting bestiality bits of the book, it's getting a lower grade.

Grade: F