Where to Start with Sharon Kay Penman: A Reading Guide
Where to start with Sharon Kay Penman — how to approach Here Be Dragons, her masterwork of medieval fiction following Joanna, daughter of King John of England, caught between loyalty to her father and love for her Welsh prince husband. A complete reading guide.
Sharon Kay Penman (1945–2021) was an American historical novelist who spent her career writing meticulously researched fiction set primarily in medieval Wales, England, and the Plantagenet court. Here Be Dragons (1985) was her first published novel — the manuscript was originally destroyed in a theft and rewritten from scratch over several years, a fact that explains something about the depth of commitment behind the finished book. The Welsh Princes trilogy (Here Be Dragons, Falls the Shadow, The Reckoning) and her Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine series cemented her reputation as the most rigorously researched and emotionally powerful writer of medieval historical fiction of her generation.
Where to Start: Here Be Dragons (1985)
The essential Sharon Kay Penman — and one of the finest medieval historical novels in the English language. Here Be Dragons opens in the court of King John, introducing the young Joanna — illegitimate, brought to court late, craving the recognition of the father she has barely known. John acknowledges her, and the acknowledgement will shape everything that follows, including the marriage he arranges to seal a political alliance: Joanna to Llewelyn ap Iorwerth, Prince of Gwynedd, the man who will unify Welsh resistance to English domination and become known to history as Llewelyn the Great.
The Welsh setting is the novel’s most distinctive contribution to its genre. Medieval Wales in English historical fiction is almost always a backdrop — the mysterious mountains to the west, the unconquered territory that defines England’s western border. Penman makes it the foreground. Her Wales is a sovereign culture with its own laws, its own bardic tradition, its own complex internal politics among the Welsh princes, and its own deep pride in a distinctiveness that English power has repeatedly tried to erase. Llewelyn is not a symbol of Celtic romance but a specific man navigating a specific political situation with intelligence, ambition, and the occasional ruthlessness that political survival required.
The marriage at the novel’s center develops with a patience that earns what it builds to. Joanna arrives in Wales knowing almost nothing of the man she has been sent to, and Penman follows the development of the relationship with unusual care — the early distance, the gradual trust, the particular intimacy of shared children and shared crisis, the love that has nothing in common with the arranged marriage that preceded it. When the novel reaches its central catastrophe — an act that threatens to destroy everything the forty-year marriage has built — the weight is proportionate to the preparation.
The political complexity is handled with a clarity that makes it accessible without simplifying it. English baronial politics, Welsh succession conflicts, the particular position of the Marches as contested borderland, the diplomacy between John and Llewelyn that was always unstable and eventually failed — all of this is rendered in specific human terms, through people with understandable motivations rather than through summary. Penman had eleven years of research behind the novel, and the result is a period that feels inhabited rather than reconstructed.
The tragedy is historical rather than invented: Penman is working with real events, real people, documented outcomes. The ending she is moving toward is available to any reader who looks up the historical record. What Penman does is make the tragedy feel earned rather than inevitable — the product of specific choices made by specific people who were trying, not always successfully, to navigate impossible circumstances with something approaching integrity.
Why Here Be Dragons Is the Ideal First Book
For a reader new to Sharon Kay Penman, Here Be Dragons is an ideal first book because it is among her most beloved novels and a fine expression of her distinctive gifts, the meticulous historical research, the rich characterization, and the absorbing, immersive storytelling. Here Be Dragons brings to life the world of medieval Wales and England, centered on the marriage of a Welsh prince and an English king’s daughter, in a sweeping, deeply researched, and emotionally rich historical novel. As an entry point it is ideal, for it is one of her best-known works and a perfect example of her immersive, meticulously researched historical fiction. It welcomes the newcomer with its vivid historical world, its rich characters, and its absorbing story, drawing the reader into her distinctive vision. It is among her major works and a fine representation of her gifts, so the new reader encounters Penman at her most characteristic. For the newcomer, then, Here Be Dragons is an excellent starting point.
What to Expect as a New Reader
As a new reader, you can expect Here Be Dragons to be a sweeping, immersive, and meticulously researched historical novel. You can expect rich historical detail, for Penman brings the world of medieval Wales and England vividly to life. You can expect meticulous research, for Penman is celebrated for her deep, careful grounding in history. You can expect rich characterization, for she renders her historical figures as complex, fully realized human beings. You can expect a central story, the marriage of a Welsh prince and an English king’s daughter, set against the conflicts of the age. You can expect absorbing, immersive storytelling. You can expect emotional depth and a strong sense of place and period. You should expect a substantial, immersive novel. Expect, in short, a sweeping, immersive, and meticulously researched historical novel, a fine introduction to Penman’s gifts.
Going Deeper After Your First Book
Once Here Be Dragons has introduced you to Penman’s gifts, the natural next step is to continue its Welsh Princes trilogy, which carries the story of medieval Wales and its struggle with England forward across its subsequent volumes. The trilogy is best read in order, for it tells a continuing historical story. Beyond it, the reader who has enjoyed Penman’s gifts can explore her other historical novels and series, which bring her meticulous research and rich characterization to the Plantagenets, the medieval world, and her historical mysteries. Reading these after Here Be Dragons deepens your appreciation of Penman’s distinctive gifts, the meticulous historical research, the rich characterization, and the absorbing storytelling. Her characteristic strengths run through her work, and the reader absorbed by Here Be Dragons will find them across her novels. Building your reading journey through Penman is a matter of continuing the Welsh Princes trilogy and exploring her wider historical fiction. The reader who begins here will find one of the most meticulous and immersive authors of medieval historical fiction to follow.
Reading Sharon Kay Penman
Here Be Dragons is Penman’s most widely read book and the natural starting point for her work. Readers who want to continue with the same characters and world should move to Falls the Shadow (1988), which follows the next generation of Welsh resistance under Joanna and Llewelyn’s son Dafydd.
For the full Sharon Kay Penman bibliography, reviews, and biography, visit the Sharon Kay Penman author page on Editors Reads.
Affiliate disclosure: Links to Amazon on this page are affiliate links. We earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where should I start with Sharon Kay Penman?
Here Be Dragons (1985) is Penman's essential book — a 704-page medieval epic that follows Joanna, the illegitimate daughter of King John of England, from her childhood through her marriage to Llewelyn Fawr, Prince of Gwynedd and the most powerful Welsh ruler of the thirteenth century. Penman spent eleven years researching and writing the novel, and the depth of historical immersion it achieves is extraordinary — medieval Wales and England feel not like a museum exhibit but like a living world that these specific people inhabited. It established her as the leading writer of medieval historical fiction of the late twentieth century.
What is Here Be Dragons about?
Here Be Dragons is centrally about loyalty in impossible conditions. Joanna loves her father, King John, with the complicated devotion of a child who needed his recognition and finally received it; she also loves her husband Llewelyn, who has built a life with her across decades and three children. When England and Wales go to war — as the political realities of the early thirteenth century made increasingly inevitable — Joanna is positioned between two people she loves who are trying to destroy each other. The novel follows this central drama across a forty-year span, through political crisis, military conflict, and the personal catastrophe that threatens the marriage at its center.
How does Here Be Dragons portray the historical figures of King John and Llewelyn?
With unusual and carefully balanced complexity. King John is not the cartoon villain of Robin Hood mythology but a real man: intelligent, competent in some respects, genuinely cruel in others, capable of affection for the daughter he acknowledged but also capable of the acts of calculated ruthlessness that made him one of the most despised rulers in English history. Llewelyn is not a romantic hero but a statesman — ambitious, sometimes brutal when political calculation required it, genuinely accomplished as a military and diplomatic leader, and convincingly portrayed as a husband whose relationship with Joanna deepens over decades of shared life.
What should I read after Here Be Dragons?
After Here Be Dragons, Penman's Falls the Shadow (1988) and The Reckoning (1991) continue the story of Welsh resistance to English domination through the next generation. Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth covers comparable epic scope in medieval England — an 800-page cathedral-building narrative with the same commitment to period immersion. Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall brings comparable historical rigour to a later period, Tudor England, with perhaps even greater literary ambition.
