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    Grania: She-King of the Irish Seas
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    Grania: She-King of the Irish Seas
    Unavailable
    Grania: She-King of the Irish Seas
    Ebook602 pages9 hours

    Grania: She-King of the Irish Seas

    By Morgan Llywelyn

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Here is an extraordinary novel about real-life Irish chieftain Grace O Malley. From Morgan Llywelyn, bestselling author of Lion of Ireland and the Irish Century novels, comes the story of a magnificent, sixteenth-century heroine whose spirit and passion are the spirit and passion of Ireland itself.

    Grania (Gaelic for Grace) is no ordinary female. And she lives in extraordinary times. For even as Grania rises as her clan's unofficial head and breadwinner and learns to love a man, she enters a lifelong struggle against the English forces of Queen Elizabeth -- her nemesis and alter ego.

    Elizabeth intends to destroy Grania's piracy and shipping empire--and so subjugate Ireland once and for all. But Grania, aided by Tigernan, her faithful (and secretly adoring) lieutenant, has no choice but to fight back. The story of her life is the story of Ireland's fight for solidarity and survival--but it's also the story of Grania's growing ability to love and be strong at the same time.

    Morgan Llywelyn has written a rich, historically accurate, and passionate novel of divided Ireland -- and of one brave woman who is Ireland herself.



    At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateFeb 20, 2007
    ISBN9781429920636
    Unavailable
    Grania: She-King of the Irish Seas
    Author

    Morgan Llywelyn

    Historian and novelist Morgan Llywelyn was born in New York City, but after the death of her husband and parents in 1985 returned to Ireland to take up citizenship in the land of her grandparents and make her permanent home there. After making the shortlist for the United States Olympic Team in Dressage in 1975, but not making the team itself, she turned to writing historical novels exploring her Celtic roots. The most successful of these was Lion of Ireland - The Legend of Brian Boru, which was published in 1980 and has sold into the millions of copies. She received the Novel of the Year Award from the National League of American Penwomen for her novel The Horse Goddess as well as the Woman of the Year Award from the Irish-American Heritage Committee for Bard: The Odyssey of the Irish. The latter award was presented to her by Ed Koch, then-mayor of New York City. Morgan is also the author of A Pocket History of Irish Rebels for the O'Brien Pocket Books Series. In 1990 Morgan Llywelyn turned to writing for the young reader, with the publication of Brian Boru, Emperor of the Irish, a biography in the novelistic style, by The O'Brien Press, Dublin. For this book she won an Irish Children's Book Trust Bisto Award in 1991. Her second book for the young reader is Strongbow, The Story of Richard and Aoife (The O'Brien Press) 1992, for which she won a Bisto Award in the Historical Fiction category, 1993 and the Reading Association of Ireland Award, 1993. Her third novel for young readers, entitled Star Dancer, (The O'Brien Press) was drawn from her experience of the world of showjumping and dressage. She has also written The Vikings in Ireland, an exploration of what actually happened when the Norsemen landed in Ireland. Morgan's latest book for children is Pirate Queen, the story of Grace O'Malley, told partly through letters from Granuaile to her beloved son. It is a thrilling tale of adventure that brings this unorthodox and inspiring historical figure to life.

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    Reviews for Grania

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      I can't remember when I first heard about Grace O'Malley, but I first learned about her last year when my dad recommended I check out Grace, a new pub opening in New York's East Side. I took off to Wikipedia and a short but glorious flurry of research. Some time later, I saw this book at Free Book Day, picked it up, and realized I'd found a gem from my newest favorite imprint.

      In case you can't tell, I'm totally biased. I love reading about golden age piracy, Elizabethan-Era history, strong women, lots of characters, and political challenges, so there was very little chance of me not liking this book. I'm happy to say that it lived up to my expectations.

      I loved how Grania was set up against Queen Elizabeth throughout the book, how she built up a kind of parasocial relationship with the woman who was so like her and yet so alien. It was also refreshing to read Elizabeth from a less favorable vantage than I usually do--I'm inclined to hero worship, so it was good to have some solid reminders that the Spanish weren't the only ones who saw her as an enemy.

      Ireland was richly described, the remnants of the brehon laws and customs well explained. The anthropologist in me delighted in the cultural explorations and clashes even as the pacifist in my cringed at the sheer destruction done to each other.

      One of the strengths of this book could easily have been its weakness: it stretches across most of Grania's life, certainly all of her adult life. After one initial vivid scene on the high seas, much of the story is somewhat removed, with only a few intense battle scenes and encounters going into blow-by-blow detail. But it worked--much as I might want to read about those, I'm happy to look for them in another book. The story of Grania's ups and downs is long and varied and Llywelyn encompassed a great deal of it. It can be a challenge to make politics so engaging.

      And the climactic scene when queen meets chieftain? I wanted it to go on and on!

      One slightly odd thing was that I always felt a bit detached from the timeline. Dates were bandied about but I didn't always feel anchored in them. Much more time passed than I noticed, so that Grania seemed to age abruptly every now and then. This is probably just a quirk of my own, though.

      My only great complaint about this book is that all but the last section are named for Grania's romantic interests. The whole story was about being free, having no equals, doing what she wanted to do, but it was trapped in the cage of her sexual exploits. Not that they weren't important, but...so were other things. The sections might have been named for the women in her life (her mother, Evleen, her daughter), for people important to her if not always romantically involved (her father, Evleen, Rauri Oge, a son), for the main places she lived or was politically involved with. It seems a shame that a woman who defied convention is, in this story, defined by who she was sleeping with (until she is too old to be considered desirable by most men, at which point a section is finally named for someone else).

      Grania herself was so well done--brave to the point of foolishness, impulsive, learning from hard experience, never beaten down despite so much difficulty. Many of the characters were, even the ones who only stayed around a short while.

      So yes, unsurprisingly I loved this book and highly recommend it to anyone interested in historical fiction, piracy, and the Elizabethan era.

      No quotes this time because there were a lot of good lines and my cat is sitting on my lap, preventing me from holding a book open and typing at the same time. You'll just have to read this one for yourself. 8-)
    • 4/5
      Although ficition, a very good account of the life of Grania O'Malley. The action is intense with a great fictional love story that helps to move the story on while still full of historical facts.
    • 4/5
      Grania: She-King of the Irish Seas is a beautifully written novel depicting a fictionalized version of the life of a well-known and highly revered Irish pirate. As with all works of historical fiction certain facts should be taken in with a grain of salt, but the novel does carefully build up the world around Gráinne Ní Mháille, attempting to explain both her actions and ambitions as well as the actions and ambitions of those who surround her. A romanticized look at a highly volatile time in Ireland's history.
    • 5/5
      Fictionalized story of the real "pirate" queen, Grace O'Malley who lived during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (who has a brief cameo in this book). Exciting adventure story. Highly recommended!