Excellent! Characters who are multi-faceted, who mature and change as they face trials and challenges, and about whose the reader cares. Fascinating history. Compelling writing. Looking forward to the final book in this series but sad to see it coming to an end.

This series just gets better and better

In Dreaming the Hound, the third volume of Manda Scott's Boudica quartet, the focus of the narrative returns to Breaca and her brother Ban, also known as Julius Valerius.

Breaca has returned to her own people, the Eceni, with her children Cunomar and Graine, and her step-daughter Cynfa. Now married to the Eceni leader Prasutogas, a client-king of Rome, she hides in plain sight from the Romans, who would gladly kill her if they ever connected the new queen of the Eceni with the war leader Boudica. Her goal is to build up an army of rebellion among the eastern tribes that have fallen under the sway of Roman authority.

Ban too has come home, in a sense, after several years spent avoiding both Romans and Britons on the island of Hibernia. In bringing a wounded young man he loves to the healers on Mona for help no one else can give, he finds in himself the desire to at last fulfill his gifts as a dreamer - and on Mona a dreamer willing to teach a former traitor how to dream.

But the Roman drive to control all of Britain continues. In the lands of the Eceni, the Roman governor authorises the work of slavers, who carry an offer to the Eceni king to relieve all the tribal debts in return for Graine and Cynfa. Breaca and Prasutogas' responses to this insult set in motion the path to the inevitable resumption of war against Rome. And in the West, governor Suetonius Paulinus marches toward Mona.

Again, Manda Scott weaves another chapter in this powerful historical fantasy series around the few facts known about the Roman treatment of the tribes of Britain and the uprising of the Iceni under Queen Boudica.