Dark Winds Rising by Mark Noce

Dark Winds Rising: A Novel by Mark Noce
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Dark Winds Rising by Mark Noce is the second book in the Queen Branwen series. In the first book Lady Branwen’s father had promised her hand in marriage to the Hammer King to unite their divided kingdoms. However, after Lady Branwen met her new King and left her home with him she immediately found herself the target of multiple assassination attempts. Lady Branwen was not one to sit by and become the property of a man and with her life in danger she took her safety into her own hands and decided to leave the Hammer King. Not knowing who to trust Lady Branwen found herself teaming up with a knight named Artagan and found herself not only trying to save herself but her people before Saxon invaders and a mysterious traitor tried to destroy her.

Now Queen Branwen is married to her beloved husband Artigan and raising a young toddler son but danger threatens her yet again. Not only are the Picts invading and Queen Branwen must try to face the Pictish Queen who is trying to turn the Welsh against one another in a civil war but there also seems to be a mysterious assassin that is targeting Queen Branwen’s young son. During all of the conflict she also finds that she is again with child and worries that she may not survive the second birth.

In the first book of this series, Between Two Fires, I found that Mark Noce was definitely a great writer but I felt a bit slighted with the book being marketed as historical romance. There wasn’t much romance to be found in the story but the historical side seemed to be pretty solid so I decided to give the second book a try to see where the story would go after the end of the first.

Now in this second book I did feel that this one could be considered to be more than just a historical fiction tale as Queen Branwen is obviously in love with her husband so there were twinges of romance which to me was a needed improvement. There is also though plenty of action taking place in the story set in 597 A.D. in medieval Wales which seemed to be accurate to the times. In the end I definitely liked this one a bit more than book one and thought it to be a nice addition to the series.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.