I have to four this for the experimental style. Which was at its most intense early on, I think, and let up as the plot had to be followed. Early on, we move from person to person and see their inner experiences. Whether or not the persons are important to the story, whether or not their thoughts are relevant. In real life, of course, people’s thoughts aren’t too often relevant, and I loved the reality that this achieved. I was confused as to who’s who (without much Scottish history to help me either) but I just forged ahead: it sorts itself out, and for me, a little confusion prevents boredom, keeps my intellect engaged, not to say challenged.

However, I had a strange time with the book, in that I quickly felt that the contents were less adventurous than the style, and I even had a sense of incongruity. So... I read for how he wrote rather than what he wrote, and I wished he’d go further, stretch expectations in other ways... This one is obviously a departure from a more standard kind of style – I know his ‘Whale Road’ isn’t much like this. There was a repetition of imagery that wore on me, though I bet you can argue that’s the building-up of a feel for the novel.

It’s on the grimy side in atmosphere, and I’m not talking Bruce and Wallace – whose history I scarcely know, though both began to interest me here as (partly-drawn as yet) characters – but the world and the people in it were anti-romantic. There’s the Dog Boy to latch your sympathies onto, and Hal, both fictional and less-important-people – the Dog Boy doesn’t even have a name. And the Auld Templar had a tarnished kind of glory to him, I think?

I admired other things. He made random deaths hard-hitting – not because the people were likeable, in fact they were very average specimens of humanity, nevertheless you saw them alive a few pages back.

Have to mention the languages. What with Scots, French, English and other, these people were only half-intelligible to each other, and he finds brilliant and funny ways to portray that. Don’t be anxious about the languages: he translates for you when you need a translation, and if he doesn’t you don’t need to know.

It was hard to review. But I was enchanted by those early scenes and his ‘rules? what rules?’ approach to the writing. The only rule is whatever works, and to a large extent this worked for me.