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Customer Reviews of DEATH OF ATTILA

THE very best author of historical fiction today
I've been a fan of Holland's ever since her first novel, written while she was an undergraduate and published the year after; that was in 1966, a year ahead of me. I've been collecting first editions of her works for years, and she remains, in my considered opinion, the best historical novelist writing in English today. Still, I like best her earlier stuff, most of which is set in various corners of medieval Europe. This one is about the last days of Attila (in AD 453), who formed the diverse Hiung tribes into a nation, and the almost immediate disintegration of his empire without him to hold it together and impress his will upon it. But the story itself focuses on Tacs, a young warrior and something of a ne'er-do-well, though brave in battle and intensely loyal to the Kagan. Then there's Dietric, son of the subject Gepid king, Adaric, who's fascinated by the Huns and becomes friendly with Tacs. There are Tacs's cronies, Monidiak and Yaya and Bryak, also single, who join him in annoying their neighbors, and The Fluteplayer, a great shaman and sort of a surrogate father to Tacs. And there's the Roman monk, Aurelius, who hopes to convert the heathen Hun but ends up understanding them much better than he expected. Holland, as always, puts you right in the midst of the people, showing you how even the strangest of strange cultures makes perfect sense to those immersed in it.

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Holland at her best
This is Cecelia Holland at her best: spare, lucid and utterly harsh. The Death of Attila concerns the relations between Huns, Romans and various Germanic tribes in the latter days of the Roman Empire. Characters from different backgrounds struggle to connect, but ultimately, in this book, ethnicity is destiny. This is one of the best historical novels I have read.