This, I believe, was the second book she wrote, after The Sunne in Splendor, and the first book in her Welsh Trilogy. Where I got the book: purchased used on Amazon.This is the first book I’ve read by Sharon Kay Penman, and it was a product of the Goodreads Effect-I’ve heard so many good things about Penman on Goodreads that I realized I was going to have to get acquainted with her work. After a marriage of political benefit to a prince of Wales, Llewellyn, Joanna's eyes are opened more to the differences between the Norman conquerors and the Welsh, whose ideas of marriage and inheritance appeal to her.Riveting, a hard-to-put-it-down book of more than 700 pages, though it does not read as a typical "chunkster". At first, King John is a somewhat sympathetic character, as Penman paints his picture through the eyes of his illegitimate daughter, Joanna. In this first of a trilogy (they can be read separately), we are immersed in the Angevin dynasty politics and intrigue, based mostly in 12th and 13th century England, Normandy, France, and Wales, and come to know the powerful people of that time. I also appreciate her skill in fleshing out the characters of our past, making them much like people we know today.Here Be Dragons is one of this author's first works, written about 30 years ago, and it's a keeper.
One of the things I like about Sharon Kay Penman is her ability to write about history in a clarifying way, without making it confusing.
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