Bending the Boyne by J.S Dunn Review For Pump Up Your Book BLog Tour

The great Boyne passage mounds are older than the Pyramids, and Stonehenge. Why were these great mounds abandoned around 2200 BCE?


2200 BCE: Changes rocking the Continent reach Eire with the dawning Bronze Age. Well before any Celts, marauders invade the island seeking copper and gold. The young astronomer Boann and the enigmatic Cian need all their wits and courage to save their people and their great Boyne mounds, when long bronze knives challenge the native starwatchers. Boann marries the invader Elcmar to stave off war, but enemies cloud her future. Banished to far coasts by Elcmar, Cian discovers how to outwit the invaders at their own game. Tensions on Eire between new and old cultures and between Boann, Elcmar, and her son Aengus, ultimately explode. What emerges from the rubble of battle are the legends of Ireland’s beginnings in a totally new light.


BENDING THE BOYNE draws on 21st century archaeology to show the lasting impact when early metal mining and trade take hold along north Atlantic coasts. Carved megaliths and stunning gold artifacts, from the Pyrenees up to the Boyne, come to life in this researched historical fiction.


Larger than myth, this tale echoes with medieval texts, Yeats, Joyce, and cult heroes modern and ancient. By the final temporal twist, factual prehistory is bending into images of leprechauns who guard Eire’s gold for eternity. As ever, the victors spin the myths.


This story appeals to fans of solid historical fiction, myth and fantasy, archaeo-astronomy, and Bronze Age Europe.

Book Excerpt:

After he took a ritual sweatbath, the elders introduced him to Basajuan. The man stood like a bull with an incongruous broad smile.
Cian turned over the agreed weight of gold. Basajuan labored at hammering the gold into a wide flat sheet, Cian working nearby to make a new curved anvil. The great smith wanted the anvil for just this project. Cian chipped and polished small stones into rectangles which Basajuan used to smooth the sheet gold into final shape.

At the anvil, the smith fashioned a cape of gold. It spanned the chest and over each shoulder and upper arm, with its opening at the back of the neck. Basajuan bent over the anvil to finish the exceptional cape, embossing tightly spaced curving ribs alternating with curving rows of tiny raised bosses, until the gold appeared to be a flow of luminous textile and beads folding around the lucky wearer. Its underside, he would finish with reinforcing leather held with bronze strips.

This flowing gold cape astounded all who saw it; it was an unprecedented object.

“Who shall receive this cape?” Cian inquired as the smith tapped the final rows of dazzling embossed beading into the gold’s arcing surface.

“This? This cape of mine is going to Taranis, the chief trader at a great estuary north of here.” The master ran his hands over his delicate work. “I shall never see it again.” He stared with Cian at the gold treasure that would travel far away from his talented hands.

“Will this chief know where it is that you Basques obtained the gold for it?”

Basajaun considered this, wiping his brow. “What do you suggest?”

“Let Taranis hear that this gold came from the Starwatchers. Nothing more.”

Basajuan agreed with a wink

About the author:

J S DUNN resided in Ireland during the past decade and became interested in the early Bronze Age and marine trade along the Atlantic coasts. The author has traveled extensively throughout coastal Spain, France, and Ireland, to research the megalith sites and the artifacts in BENDING THE BOYNE.

The author  has been published in the fields of law and psychology, and has attended fiction writers’ conferences and workshops in NYC, Arizona, and Florida.

My Thoughts:

I was a little apprehensive when I was first approached by Seriously Good Books to review Bending the Boyne as I am not a fan of reading history books. It depends on the subject matter of course and since I am of Irish descent, anything I can learn about Ireland I will jump at. The novel tells us of civilization in early Ireland, the trading routes and the mining of copper and the quest for gold. It also tells us about the Starwatchers who are peaceful people who study and record the stars and the heavens. This book gives us an idea of what life was like at that time along with the carvings in stones and mounds such as Newgrange that are prelevant in the area of the Boyne River. Having visited Ireland and while reading this book I could picture in my mind how it may have been at one time in history living along the Boyne. This book is a very well researched book and it shows in the writing as to how it pulls the reader into the day to day lives of the central characters. If you have an interest in Ireland and it's history, this is a book to read, even though it is technically a novel and historical fiction there is enough of true facts to pull it all together in an enjoyable story. Is it fact or fiction, you decide. 
I received a review copy of this book from Seriously Good Books and I am participating in the Pump Up Your Books Blog Tour and was not monetarily compensated for my review