After finding your books about 2 months ago, I’m tearing through them at a staggering rate (at least to me). After a drought in reading for the past two years, as my twin daughters took up more than all of my awake downtime, I was introduced to Azincourt by a friend and read it in a couple days of fits and starts between diaper changes, cleaning food off the floor and bedtime forays into Richard Scary’s world. It was fun, fast and historically engaging. I then read you Arthur series and am working on book 5 of Saxon. Here’s my irritation: The first 3rd of each subsequent book rehashes the story, characters, and plot of the previous book. It smells like some editor told you to remind people about who is who and what is what. To me, since I move from one book to the next without a noticeable break, this seems a tiny bit offensive, as if we wouldn’t know who Aethelflaed is or who is at Dunholm currently. You now have a very devoted reader base, most of whom are reading the
entire series. I think one line at the beginning of each book would be more effective; it could simply state: “this is a continuation of the Saxon Chronicles and picks up ___ years after the last book, _______ ends. To best understand the story as it stands, it is best to read the previous books in the series”. I think that this would free up your avid readers to dive right in to the next segment of the story without skipping frequent paragraphs that rehash what we have read several days previously. I’m sure you have your reasons, but wanted to make sure you have this feedback, if for no other reason than to bring up a conversation that I’m sure you’ve had previously. Thank you so much for the wonderful, historical stories.
Daniel Herd