Ironhand's Daughter

The story

The highlanders' independence ended at Colden Moor, a defeat that cost them their best warriors and much of their pride. The Outlanders now rule the clans through the brutal Baron Gottasson, and the highlanders live with it resentfully. Seers have long foretold a leader of Ironhand's blood, greatest of the old highland kings, who will drive the occupiers out. Only one person alive carries that blood, and she has no interest in the job.

Sigarni is young, silver-haired and a superb huntress, and she lives for her own pleasures: her hawk Abby, her hound Lady, and whichever lover takes her fancy. Plenty of people call her worse things than wilful. Her closest friend is Ballistar, a dwarf, and she spends time with Asmidir, an outsider rumoured to be a sorcerer, who teaches her about falconry and makes no secret of what he thinks of the way she lives. She is also, as it turns out, not quite who she believes herself to be.

The Outlanders have political reasons to want a war, and they are ready to seize on any excuse to break the highlanders for good. Sigarni becomes that excuse. Hunted by the baron's soldiers and stalked by an evil sorcerer, she is pushed step by step towards the role the prophecies describe, and the suffering on the way changes her. The magic, when it comes, is strange: there are creatures that have been hunting her through time, and a gateway into another world through which she, Ballistar and the great Ironhand himself have to pass.

The book is a story of occupation and rebellion told through a woman who starts out caring about nobody but herself. Gemmell is more interested in how she changes than in dressing up the war, and the battles, when they come, are hard and costly.

Reading notes

Ironhand's Daughter was published in February 1995 and is one of the few Gemmell novels with a woman at the centre. Its highland clans and their Outlander overlords owe an obvious debt to Scotland and to Edward I's England, and it covers ground he would return to in the later Rigante books: highland clans living under an occupying power.

The book's boldest choice is also its biggest risk. Sigarni begins as arrogant and careless of other people, and Gemmell does such a thorough job of it that many readers never warm to her, even as the story works to change her. Those who stay with her find a novel with real heart and a clear view of war as something that brings out the best and worst in people. Those who do not tend to see a competent assembly of familiar Gemmell parts: prophecies, plenty of fighting, a smattering of magic and a late turn into alternate worlds.

It is readable and quick, but it is not the place to meet Gemmell for the first time. It suits readers who already like his work and want to see him try a different kind of lead, and anyone drawn to the Scottish setting.