Profound, moving, dense, warm, earthly, magical in a pre-medieval way. Reads like a wonderful and brutal and gory children’s tale for adults who love European history for all its alien-ness to the contemporary world, and all the petty humanness of it that still lives on today. Beautifully written and far too full of proper nouns for me to fully understand what was going on, and a very very very long novel, but nonetheless, worth it!

I'm a fast reader, and usually it wouldn't take me more than a few days to fly through a book the size of Hild – yet it ended up taking me weeks to finish. Not because there was anything wrong with it, but because (a) I had to keep putting it down so I could absorb what I was reading, and (b) it was so immersive, I needed to be able to set aside a few hours each time I opened it so I could sink in without being disturbed. Hild is slow-pouring honey. It is rich with detail, gradual in its movemen...

This book is driving me nuts, because parts of it are so wonderful and parts are utterly infuriating.My objections are similar to the ones appearing in other reviews. Yes, it is meticulously researched, and paints a very real-seeming picture of daily life for women in the time period. I often felt very immersed in the world of the book. Yes, Hild the character is awesome and brilliant and genre-convention-breaking.But this book meanders, and it does a very poor job of explaining just what the he...

So, I've been struggling with Hild: A Novel--or as I think of it, Hild: Nicola Griffith Did Her Research and She Really, Really Wants You to Know It--for almost a month now. I am only halfway through the thing. I've been thinking the whole time that, gosh, there are probably people who would love this book and devour it and celebrate its own unique intricacies, and how unfortunate it is that I am not even close to being one of those people. I do really love some things about the book--the politi...

It's been a long time since I was so happy reading a book this fat, and even longer since I was so sad to see it end. But! -- it took a gloriously long time to get there. HILD is a thick one. You get to the point where you're swimming in the world of the book, just totally entranced, drunk on story and language, and you think: given everything that's happened so far -- whole lives unfurled -- this must be coming to a close. But no: feel the pages beneath your fingers. You're not even halfway thr...

Before she was even born, Hild's mother prophesied that she would be "the light of the world." Hild turned out not to be the boy her parents expected, but her mother trains her to become an important figure nevertheless. As a child, Hild's sharp mind merits her a reputation as a seer and inclusion in her uncle, King Edwin's, household. Through observation, curiosity, and never-ceasing reflection, Hild's mind continues to expand amidst never ending political (and physical) battles. Every moment f...

I don't know when I last waffled so much considering how to rate and review a novel. I'm opting on the high side because Nicola Griffith writes with such confidence and because I believe that ardent fans of speculative historical fiction have every reason to be crazy in love with this book. This reader got bogged down in highly-and-repetitively-detailed world building and the army of characters with impossible names and a plot that lurched from battle to battle for reasons that I simply gave up ...

I have spent the last four days in seventh century Britain so fully engrossed in its brutal and beautiful world that sitting down at my computer feels like I have come back to the future.Saint Hilda of Whitby, daughter of a Northumbrian prince, grew up to become an Abbess, a trainer of bishops for the growing Christian church in Britain, and a consultant to kings and princes, but except for a brief mention in The Ecclesiastical History of the English People by Bede, aka the Father of English His...

Given up at page 150. I do not care what happens to any of the characters, there is almost no forward tension and the historical details in themselves are not enough. I strongly suspect that if I bothered to struggle through the rest, I would hate it even though I desperately want to like it. So I won't. Goodbye and good luck Hild. I hope you were more interesting in real life.

Griffith's writing is gorgeous. There is an immediacy and specificity in her descriptions of the 7th century Anglo-Saxon world that completely immerse the reader in that unfamiliar time and place. She uses language like a magic wand, although the world she creates in this novel is anything but romantic -- it is hard and cold and dangerous; life is peripatetic; 'home' is a concept rather than a place; days revolve around the laborious tasks that keep a people alive, and years around the seasons o...