‘The horsemen start down the slope towards her. All four of them, kicking up thick swirls of snow dust that the wind takes and scatters. Their spear points shining coldly in the light. She sheds her gloves, curls her numb fingers around the hilt of her knife. Not the one he gave her. Her own. The one she brought with her all the way from home. The one she practised with, which he showed her how to use.’

In the aftermath of 1066, the Norman army marches across England, burning homes and killing indiscriminately as they go. Five travellers fleeing the slaughter band together for survival, but each one carries a secret that could put all their lives at risk.

If this plot sounds familiar, it’s because you’ve read/heard of Company of Liars by Karen Maitland. Although set 300 years later, it is also about a group of people banding together to escape a tragedy (in Maitland’s case, the plague) but each has a secret that threatens their safety. How no one noticed these similarities, I’ll never know. Company of Liars is a fantastic (and very popular) novel, and so The Harrowing could but suffer in comparison.

Aitcheson’s post-1066 world is bleak and monochrome on the page, with no gory details spared of the terrible things the group of travellers witness along the way. It’s a fascinating setting, one I’ve not read about before, and the brutality of the Norman invasion was a real shock to the system.

The characters each had their own interesting story to tell but it seemed more like five short stories pushed together than a whole novel. The ways the characters interacted with each other also seemed contrived and more often than not relied on cliché. There was very little – if any – character development, so I didn’t really care about what happened to any of them.

The overall plot is thin and relies a lot more on coincidence than clever storytelling. It reads like a first draft, as if it could have been a great novel if an editor had stepped in with post-its and a highlighter. Aitcheson is guilty of numerous errors which betray a lack of attention to detail. There were flashes of brilliant, atmospheric writing which made it all the more disappointing when Aitcheson fell back on clichés.

The book isn’t particularly long for this kind of novel but it feels much longer than it actually is. The plot plods along, and there were times when I wanted Aitcheson to stop focusing on apocalyptic descriptions of the landscape and for something to actually happen instead. It starts off well but Aitcheson can’t seem to carry this through for more than a couple of chapters.

This book was an interesting glimpse into a period of history not often written about, especially not from this perspective of refugees fleeing the Normans, but it had too many faults for me to enjoy it completely.