Warrior Queen: the Story of Boudica, Celtic Queen - Alan Gold

** - I'm very fond of Celtic history in general, though I knew very little about this. Maybe my expectations were just too high, but it seemed like a very Phillippa Gregory sort of version of the story. Too much emphasis on sex and just not enough interesting story.

This had such potential to be exciting. The Celtic tribes uniting to fight off the repressive Roman regime. One woman with a vendetta and a grasp of Roman tactics leads a massive army against a seasoned Roman general. This is the stuff of high drama, or at least a stirring tragic story. And this really did try. But it failed.

First off the book takes over 250 pages to even get to the incident that transforms Romanized Boudica into the vengeance-driven queen known as Britannia. 250 pages of practically nothing happening. Except for plenty of sex - which is not only plentiful, but unnecessary to the focus of the story. In the first few scenes, for example, Boudica encounters a boy with whom she has a ridiculously stilted conversation about how often she has been 'entered' and he never shows up again.

That's not the only way the story wanders. The story runs through more than its fair share of Roman emperors as well, which certainly adds to the sordid sexual encounters. There seems to be little to no point to these except possibly as comparisons between the scheming Roman women and the more overt strength of Boudica. If that's the case, though, it certainly fails as well.

The good points of this book mostly involved the fight scenes. These were interesting and clever - I enjoyed seeing Boudica portrayed as smart, observant and competent but defeated by the lack of discipline amongst her men. Unfortunately even this is undermined by the 'inspirational speaker' style orations Boudica uses to unite the Celts after years of living fat on the Romans' patronage and ignoring the sufferings of other tribes. It just comes off as stilted and cheesy. I certainly wouldn't have followed her into battle.

Bottom line: The idea and the history is fascinating, and there is certainly room for literary license considering how little is known about Boudica. But find a different book about it. And please let me know if it was any good.