Canelo first paperback edition - 2023
The first - pleasant - surprise was finding, on the very first page of this paperback, amongst other gobbets of praise for the previous book in the series, The King's Jewel, an extract from my own Review in The Ricardian Bulletin in March 2023. I gave that novel a really positive review, but I was slightly disappointed with this second outing for Sir John Hawker. I realise there were several reasons for this, a major one not being the novel's fault. In two recent Blogs I described watching 164 Netflix episodes of a Turkish serial and being absolutely hooked by them. I had just started Ethan Bale's book, when I discarded it for nearly three weeks. Not a good thing to do. However, I thought this time the story of Sir John and his trusty band was rather pedestrian, even dull. They leave Venice in support of the mysterious Hungarian woman Maria Hunyadi they first met in Venice. Her quest? To liberate her father, the [in]famous Vlad Dracula from a castle's prison in remote Wallachia.
The little group journeying east includes Hawker himself; Jacob de Grood, Hawker's long-time man-at-arms; Sir Giles Ellingham, the young knight and bastard son of the late King Richard the Third; Gaston Dieudonné. the enigmatic Burgundian who still has a fancy for Giles; and the 14 year-old Jack. They had their weapons, but the rest had been abandoned in the headlong flight from the Serene Republic. Now, their pitted and rusting open-face helms, greasy leather brigandines of rivetted plates, and tall mud-stained and cracked leather boots all told the story of loss and ill fortune. Their paymaster, and saviour in Venice, is Maria - full of promises that more mercenaries would be joining them and that there would be treasure at the end of their journey. That is, if they helped her find and free Vlad Dracul, known as Ʈepeş. They are soon joined by Bartolo Faldi, an old Milanese acquaintance of Hawker's and known to Maria from a previous time in Buda. Gaston eventually finds out that Faldi's sole reason for joining up is simply to get his hands on any treasure.
They come across some Turkish raiders murdering villagers and successfully put them to sword. As a result, this brings in the two individuals mentioned in the book's Prologue: Pedja Jankovic, a Bosnian Christian soldier (a martolos) who had served under the Ottomans, and Orkan Ozdemir an Ottoman Turk. Pedja is out for revenge, as he thinks Maria has murdered his young brother who was in that raiding party. He and Orkan successfully attach themselves to the Hawker group and look for ways to murder Maria. The story then develops into a geography lesson, taking in the Hungarian lands - all as flat as the skin on a custard - sojourning at the fortress towns of Temesvár, Deva, and Hermannstadt; and on to Wallachia.
The author is still strong on character depiction (light relief includes Maria bedding Ellingham) and descriptions of scenery: the Carpathians rose up, sombre brown and grey in their winter garb. A few patches of green clung to some of the slopes where evergreen forest grew. Looking east, towards the higher range of hills, snow topped the peaks...[the track] wound its way through thickets of hawthorn and hazel, old oak and beech...through the mostly bare branches, a few amber leaves left clinging...the sky had cleared a little in the dying light, azure blue to an inky purple.
Notwithstanding these undoubted authorial skills, why did I find the story 'dragging'? Perhaps, it was too detailed and mildly repetitive. I wished they would simply get to the castle and rescue Vlad. And when they did, he turned out to be a husk of a man (although still capable of sudden brutality) - I suppose this was inevitable after nearly a decade in a castle dungeon. He doesn't last long, falling over a cliff with Pedja in an embrace of death (shades of Holmes and Moriarty?). Moreover, even the finding of Vlad's 'treasure' in the cathedral of Saint Michael at Weissenburg is a bit of a damp squib. The small, tarnished silver coffret deposited years ago by Vlad, contained only an enamelled pendant the size of a large coin, a winged dragon crouching with its tail passing under its claws and encircling its own neck....upon its back was a cross, enamelled in bright carmine red. No wonder Maria exclaimed, That is all? Soon after, she disappears, threatened by Gaston that he will tell Giles that she is no more than a whore, a murderess and a thief.
And so it ends - Hawker and his tiny band set out to return to Venice and, probably, England. By this time, Hawker has told Giles that he has a half-brother and half-sister: John of Gloucester, appointed captain of the Calais garrison by King Richard; and Katherine Plantagenet, wed to the Earl of Huntingdon, William Herbert. Unlike Giles, both recognised as royal bastards by their father. I have already had a look at the first few pages of the next novel in what was always going to be a trilogy by Ethan Bale. I have the feeling it will be as good as The King's Jewel.
No comments:
Post a Comment