In 60 A.D., a Celtic queen gathered an army to drive the Romans from Albion, known today as Britian. This was a time when women fought as warriors alongside their men.

Out of the chaos of war emerges a young warrior woman by the name of Taryn. After Queen Boudicca is defeated in a bloody battle, Taryn learns that her brother Brian has been taken to Rome to be sold into slavery, and she vows to journey to the great city to rescue him. It is the dawn of Christianity, and the demented ruler Nero is on the throne. While Taryn searches forBrian, she kills a Roman soldier in self-defense and is condemned to fight for her life in the arena as a gladiator.

If you like your novels fast paced and to the point, you can’t go far wrong with Crimson Dawn. Barbara Korsness grabs the reader, pulls him in and doesn’t let go for a breathless one hundred and ninety-five pages of intense action.

Crimson Dawn is unlike any gladiatrix-genre novel I’ve reviewed for these pages in that the theme is overtly religious. To use a filmic analogy, Crimson Dawn is more akin to “Demetrius and the Gladiators” than “The Arena.” Certainly, Korsness’s ocular style and breakneck pace has more the feel of a movie script as opposed to a magnum opus of literary fiction yet there’s a freshness and innocence to the prose that evokes those Christian epics of yesteryear. But whilst the novel wears its ecclesiastical heart on its sleeve, Korsness is careful never to preach to the reader and indeed even has the heroine Taryn question the faith at times.

If there’s a fault with Crimson Dawn it’s that the novel is too short. Weighing in at just under two hundred pages, there’s little time to settle into a scene before we’re whisked off again to a new setting. Bearing in mind the epic scale of the action – from Boudicca’s Britannia to Nero’s Rome, the arena, the Circus Maximus, the great fire, persecution of Christians and a romance as well, Crimson Dawn just goes too fast for my tastes. That’s not to say it’s a bad book, but my personal preference is a more sedate pace.

All in all, Crimson Dawn is perfect for a quick and satisfying read. The gladiatrix section of the story is well handled, but readers should be aware that Taryn’s stint in the arena is only part of her amazing journey. Barbara Korsness has packed in far more into her protagonist’s story. Fans of fast-paced, well researched historical fiction should definitely reserve a copy of Crimson Dawn. Barbara Korsness is evidently a fan of the Warrior Woman genre, and she writes what she likes - she has penned several novels in the genre and all are worth checking out.

Crimson Dawn is available from www.amazon.co.uk and www.amazon.com and you can sample Barbara's other novels at her website - http://sunstone40.tripod.com/