Hunting the Sun by Jean Gill – Beauty as Testimony

Power rarely announces itself. It shimmers inviting admiration while concealing the cost of its making – much like silk under candlelight. But history and human nature also suggest otherwise.

Ahead of an anticipated collaborative anthology, I’ve enjoyed new historical fiction authors and discovered what’s hidden beneath quiet surfaces. But when beauty is crafted under constraint, does it remain beauty… or does it become testimony?

This week’s historical fiction feature, Hunting the Sun by Jean Gill, moves with confidence beyond the familiar territories of northern sagas, into the cosmopolitan court of twelfth-century Sicily. Under the rule of Roger II, this is no passive backdrop but a calculated arena where language, loyalty, and lineage intersect in ways that demand constant negotiation.

At the centre stand Skarfr and Hlif, figures shaped as much by exile as by identity. Their presence within this southern court introduces tension: the outsider navigating systems designed to exclude, interpret and test. Gill handles this with precision. Conflict is not imposed through spectacle, but embedded within interaction, both gesture as restraint.

Particularly striking is the inclusion of Rachel, a silk worker drawn from Byzantium into a system that values her craft while diminishing her autonomy. Through her, Gill expands the narrative beyond courtly intrigue into something structurally revealing. The production of beauty — silk, in this case — is inseparable from control. We get economy, power, and captivity woven together.

What distinguishes this novel is its command of texture without overwhelming historical details. We encounter sensory richness, the weight of gold thread, the press of bodies in enclosed spaces that serve to reinforce the underlying tension rather than distracting from it. Myth, too, is present, but never intrusive. The shadow of Norse belief is present as interpretation, shaping the perception without overpowering the narrative,

This controlled layering is something I find particularly effective and it echoes my own narrative approach in When Secrets Bloom. There, as here, what is unspoken carries consequence. Power resides not only in action, but in silence, in endurance, in the ability to adapt without surrender.

Both works arrive at a shared understanding: survival, especially within systems of power, is rarely visible and never simple.

Hunting the Sun is a measured, assured continuation of The Midwinter Dragon series. It does not rely on momentum alone, but on structure, atmosphere and a careful calibration of voice.

Readers who seek historical fiction that engages with power not as abstraction but as lived experience will find this novel extremely rewarding.

While reading Hunting the Sun, consider this question: when beauty is crafted under constraint, does it remain beauty… or does it become testimony?

BUY LINKS: Amazon US / Amazon UK

Award-winning Welsh author and photographer Jean Gill lives in Provence with the best scent-hound in the world, a Nikon D750 and a man. Best known for writing epic medieval adventures in The Troubadours and The Midwinter Dragon series, Jean has published 27 multi-genre books since 1988, including the dog bestseller Someone To Look Up To. Although she’s hung up her beekeeping gloves, she still cares about her wild neighbours, which include boar, badgers, foxes and hares.

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Beneath Quiet Surfaces, Beauty as Testimony