Review: My Lady Judge

My Lady Judge by Cora Harrison
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Loved, loved, loved this book! Can't wait to read the rest of the series. Usually I'm the person who skips over the quotes at the beginning of chapters because the author is trying to be "deep," but this time I didn't. Each chapter had an excerpt of the English translation of ancient Irish law books--fascinating stuff. And, of course, this book is about a female brehon (judge/teacher of law/king's court) who has most of this stuff memorized so she can pass judgement on her people in the Burren.

I feel like this book gave me great insight into life in medieval Ireland--fascinating how women have more rights here until the English came along and took all that away. In this book, Galway is English and Henry VIII has just taken over in England, so the change is starting to happen. Now that I know how the laws of ancient Ireland worked, I understand how they didn't understand the English! Two totally different sets of laws. And, I gotta admit, the Irish ones make a lot of sense. Most of the punishments were fines of cows or coinage, and the clan had to pay if the accused couldn't. Fascinating stuff. I can't wait to find out more.

View all my reviews