[Celtic Tetralogy 01] • The Golden Strangers

Britain Invaded at the Dawn of Time

Set in the grey, twilight world of the Stone Age, when the line between magic and reality was less easily drawn - and more easily crossed - than it is today, this novel tells of the 'Barley Dream', that web of ritual and human sacrifice without which the corn could not be made to grow.

Garroch, young chieftain of a primitive and taboo-ridden community, turns back for a while the invasion of the fair-haired strangers from the north. But when he falls under the spell of the sensual Isca, the princess who rides with them, the Barley Dream is threatened by the magic of the Sun...But THE GOLDEN STRANGERS is no romance. Poetry and violence are equally matched in it: and through a stark and unmitigated realism Henry Treece conveys what it must have been like to 'believe in magic'.

...one of the best as well as one of the strangest historical novels I have ever met. - Rosemary Sutcliff

Cover Illustration: Michael Heslop