---
product_id: 11040834
title: "Hild: A Novel (The Hild Sequence)"
brand: "nicola griffith"
price: "€ 48.99"
currency: EUR
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 8
url: https://www.desertcart.es/products/11040834-hild-a-novel-the-hild-sequence
store_origin: ES
region: Spain
---

# Hild: A Novel (The Hild Sequence)

**Brand:** nicola griffith
**Price:** € 48.99
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

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- **What is this?** Hild: A Novel (The Hild Sequence) by nicola griffith
- **How much does it cost?** € 48.99 with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship
- **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.es](https://www.desertcart.es/products/11040834-hild-a-novel-the-hild-sequence)

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## Description

Hild: A Novel (The Hild Sequence)

## Images

![Hild: A Novel (The Hild Sequence) - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51ZFeKSEMtL.jpg)
![Hild: A Novel (The Hild Sequence) - Image 2](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51mUN60h0BL.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    An exceptional novel.
  

*by E***F on Reviewed in the United States on May 15, 2016*

The story is woven with facts and fiction. It’s based on real people in early 7th century England at king Edwin’s courts in Northumbria a couple of hundred years after the Roman Empire civilisation had left and just as the new Romans are coming in with their Christ god.  This is the interregnum when the Angles, Saxons and Jutes came in to England and pushed the British Celts west and settled kingdoms of Saxons, Jutes and Angles. These new peoples sit up against the Britons/Celts in Wales and Scotland.  Irish Christianity is lurking about but the principal gods are naturists with Woden being dominant.Hild, who is fictionally imagined here, is known to historians as Hilda of Whitby.  The Venerable Bede in his 8th century history of England noted that as a child and youth, Hilda was an adviser to the king her cousin or great uncle.  Bede was clearly impressed at the life of the woman and Nicola Griffith looks at the possibilities of Hild’s life from that of a child growing to about 22 through the nearly 600 page book which snakes around Edwin’s growth of kingship looping in other kingdoms to become Over King.  The novel ends just before Edwin’s kingdom and his life ends in battles with a confederation of Welsh and Britons.Later, in known history as Hilda prioress of Whitby Abbey, Hild was a major player in issues of Church and state and played a pivotal role in aligning Catholicism in England to Rome rather than to Ireland, which had Greek leanings.It is probable that Hild was a precocious, prescient and unusually intelligent child.  With her as the central player Nicola Grrifith explores the rhythms of life, the values, customs and beliefs of a part of England that she herself grew up in in the 20th century.  The writer pairs two characters through the book, Hild principally, and also the boy Cian her childhood companion with whom Hild confides and comes to know the world as they grow.  Cian is a fictionalised character and a very useful device for the writer given his guessed at birth father and his empathetic knowledge of Hild.  We understand Hild not as some mythic witch and seer to the king, as the people about see her, and accept her as an intelligent person who has learnt to observe and read the natural world and the political ambitions of its people.A great amount of the novel is to do with the life and work of the women of the household of the king and, from time to time, the women of the house holds of lords and lesser men and down to the huts and hovels of the peasants and poor.  As well as divining the patterns of nature it seems that Hild is adept at setting the patters to be woven in the cloth making rooms.  Women weaving is a major task in this world and it is this that leads into Griffith’s major metaphor in her own woven story.  The deftness of the weft (wic) in daily weaving ensuring the smoothing lines of weft is as daily live in the domain.  However, of greater importance underlying all this is the warp of the fabric; the lines of long thread in the weave, their strength and necessity of the weights at the end of each warp line.This warp and the weights holding the line true are akin to the holding the line of belief  in the fabric of life in this spot in 7th England.  These are changing in this part of the world in history.  As always and anywhere, the bulk of the people adhere within a social order to the extent of shared values and beliefs and most people accept a belief without exploring the myth or principle behind it.  In this novel the principle of ‘belief’ is somewhat explored.  The weights of the warp lines are going awry.  There are a whole lot of gods floating about in the people’s minds – Woden principally – that determine the order of the way of life and the natural world.  That order is being challenged; being undermined even.  In a political power aligned marriage Edwin brings in a Roman Bishop and a bunch of evangelisers and through the novel we are part of the swirl as the power elite of the old ways are replaced by the problem elites of the Italian Christ god world – while always the rhythms of the natural world and human husbandry of it keep going on.We see the issue of ‘belief’, and the use of swaying people’s minds and loyalty, become a matter of the use of power, force and fear.  There are Irish priest people too in the undergrowth and, as a child, Hild is blown away recognising the use and benefit of writing and an Irish priest is engaged to teach her writing but not about his Christ god.  But the Roman Christ priests see the Irish Christ priests as spies to be expelled so what is believed in by the priests becomes less important than the male persons holding the influence of political and temporal power.The writer has researched her history and the way of life – the rhythms – of that period and rather than Hild being a magician seer, it is more that she notices things and can ‘read’ the natural world.  The novel is great.  The language used and its rhythms are akin to the world Hild lived in.  it is quite poetic.  It is not so much a page turner, not that it was hard to put down but it was always a pleasure to pick up.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Brilliant
  

*by A***T on Reviewed in the United States on May 14, 2023*

The author's beautiful writing created a remarkable place and time. The story progresses from the child, Hild, to her rise as a "seer" to powerful men, and into a world tainted by hints of the miraculous. Hild's vision and courage are mirrored in a perfectly tuned mood--dark yet filled with light.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    I loved it. I loved reading it, and I look forward to a year or two or three from now when it's time to read it again.
  

*by B***S on Reviewed in the United States on June 2, 2015*

Nicola Griffith’s HILD manages at once to have all the sweep of The Lord of the Rings and all the interiority of The Bell Jar. It is one of the best books I’ve read in years.Set in a war-torn 6th century England, the book follows Hild, a girl at the court of Edwin, overking of the Anglisc. Hild is trained by her mother to be Edwin’s seer, and the narrative follows Hild through childhood to adulthood as she adopts that role and uses it to keep herself and her loved ones safe in uncertain times. In the background, England changes as Christianity spreads across the island.There is so much to rave about in this book. The characters are drawn with an immense amount of depth—most notably Hild, but this extends to virtually everyone who appears on the page. More than that, the characters’ relationships to each others are written with a depth that is remarkable. The web of interactions between the characters is intricate in a way that adds texture to the book, enriches it, instead of ever feeling confusing or distracting.I was most fascinated by Hild’s triangulated relationship to her mother, Breguswith, her role as the king’s seer, and the way this role seemed to, for lack of a better word, queer her gender within the confines of her society. Hild’s capability as a seer is posited externally as a kind of magic, but neither Hild herself or Breguswith seems to regard it as such. Rather, Hild is just exceptionally observant and astute—something which Breguswith actively cultivates in her from a very young age.Her role as seer—the mystique it brings, the isolation the mystique brings with it—helps Hild gather information. It makes her clear-headed. By design she is less distracted by personal social obligations. Her position as a seer keeps her family and loved ones safe. But it also means that she is alone. For much of her childhood and adolescence, she is almost completely alone. She is given a kind of elusive voice and freedom, but a peculiar cost, and the tension it causes between her and her mother, who carved this role out for her, was beautifully written. Those few times that Hild begins to invest in her own personal life, in her own self, and let her get distracted are the exact times she misses something. Those are the times she fails to make a ‘prediction’, that something surprises her. Hild is very quick to course correct—she tries to detach, to become the seer again, but it hurts her to do it.Part of that elusive freedom is that Hild inhabits both feminine and masculine roles throughout the book—she is called a freemartin (defined in the book’s glossary as “a female calf masculinized in the womb by its male twin”) more than once, often disparagingly. She refers to herself as both sword and skirt, which is both literal and symbolic given that she fights with a huge knife. She weaves with the women, and then she takes a band of warriors out to clear bandits in a section of the book that is graphic and haunting and chilling and leaves her with the nickname the Butcher-bird. Hild, because she has always inhabited both and neither gender sphere, has always been a liminal creature of odd gender, seems to watch others’ reactions to her gendered movements with a detachment. She seems to have little yearning to anchor herself to one point or another. But then again, Breguswith has bred into Hild detachment from such an early age that detachment is Hild’s go-to. Hild has never really been allowed to want.There is also, in Griffith’s writing, an immersiveness of a very foreign world. The trick is that it’s a world that once existed but one incredibly different than what we live in now. Things we take for granted, like the rapture of hearing music for the first time, or the sheer political power of being the only faction on an entire island who is literate.I have so much more to say about this book. I loved it. I loved reading it, and I look forward to a year or two or three from now when I can’t remember all the details and it’s time to read it again.

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*Product available on Desertcart Spain*
*Store origin: ES*
*Last updated: 2026-02-23*