A brilliant, lush, sweeping historical novel about the rise of the most powerful woman of the Middle Ages: Hild

Hild is born into a world in transition. In seventh-century Britain, small kingdoms are merging, usually violently. A new religion is coming ashore; the old gods’ priests are worrying. Edwin of Northumbria plots to become overking of the Angles, ruthlessly using every tool at his disposal: blood, bribery, belief.

Hild is the king’s youngest niece. She has the powerful curiosity of a bright child, a will of adamant, and a way of seeing the world --- of studying nature, of matching cause with effect, of observing human nature and predicting what will happen next --- that can seem uncanny, even supernatural, to those around her. She establishes herself as the king’s seer. And she is indispensable --- until she should ever lead the king astray. The stakes are life and death: for Hild, her family, her loved ones, and the increasing numbers who seek the protection of the strange girl who can read the world and see the future.

Hild is a young woman at the heart of the violence, subtlety, and mysticism of the early medieval age --- all of it brilliantly and accurately evoked by Nicola Griffith’s luminous prose. Recalling such feats of historical fiction as Hilary Mantel’s WOLF HAIL and Sigrid Undset’s KRISTIN LAVRANSDATTER, HILD brings a beautiful, brutal world --- and one of its most fascinating, pivotal figures, the girl who would become St. Hilda of Whitby --- to vivid, absorbing life.