A considered attempt to set out what we can know about the rulers of what is now Wales in the early medieval period, Timothy Venning's new book does not shy away from problems of dating and interpretation in the use of the meagre source material. Venning takes a regional approach, and rather than try to provide a water-tight narrative is happy to present different possibilities and traditions, weighing up their likelihood and pointing the reader in the direction of further discussion as necessary. The book starts with coverage of the Iron Age background, as well as the shadowy post-Roman era, finishing with the period of Anglo-Norman expansion and Welsh resistance and co-existence for which we are on much firmer ground.