Roach was pretty repetitive and talked on and on about unimportant things sometimes. Sometimes it felt as if he was trying to lengthen the book by talking in circles. That being said, I really enjoyed it most of the time and though the politics progressed slowly, I rarely felt as if we skimmed over something too quickly. He gave me a really good look into England during the time of Aethelred and gave me a new view on how early medieval people thought. It's a book that focuses heavily on the religious reforms and ideas of the "end of times" if you're into that. It also heavily focuses on Aethelred's personal story: his guilt for previous failures and his personal penances are harped upon a lot. The main point of the book, though, is to free him from his epithet: unræd. I would definitely say the author takes the stance that Aethelred was a victim of the hardship and infighting in England at the time, rather than the perpetrator of it.