May 11 2006
REVIEW: The Falcons of Montabard by Elizabeth Chadwick (aka Susan Hicks)
Dear. Ms Chadwick/Hicks,
Brava! Those who liked Seton’s Katherine need to check this
one out. Like in Katherine, we get a wonderfully accurate picture of life in the Middle Ages. In this case, life amongst the crusaders in Palestine while it was still in the hands of Europeans. I enjoy how you’re not hesitant to give the lead characters flaws and while some will cavil at the heroine marrying another man before finally hooking up with the hero, I thought it added a great deal of authenticity to the story. I have to mention how the story made me want to sit up half the night tonight looking for information on the Crusader Kingdom in the Middle East. And to me, that is the sign of an interesting book well told.
Many of the secondary characters of the story are just as interesting as the main ones. I especially loved Fergus, a man who’s lived in the Kingdom of Jerusalem for over 20 years and who is cousin to the heroine’s father. The man loves his whisky and fights like a demon, yelling Gaelic curses all the time he swings his battle ax. Usamah, who is the nephew of the Emir who at one point holds the hero and heroine captive and who shows the viewpoint of the Saracens. And the women of Montabard and the various harems who struggle to survive in a world that fells even the strongest of men. And who frequently astound the men with their strength and courage.
You have a wonderful way with language and like Seton don’t bash readers over the head with translations of medieval terms but instead you do us the honor of assuming we’re intelligent enough to look them up if we don’t already know them. The descriptions are fabulous and make sense for the time. Mud is described as being fetlock deep and tension is “winding within him like the rope on a mangonel.”
The story slowly and graciously unfolds at a pace that never careens wildly from event to event but that never drags either. It is a book to be savored and it’s an A for me.
~Jayne
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May 11, 2006 @ 07:06:07
I recently read my first Elizabeth Chadwick book and really enjoyed it! I will be looking out for this one!
May 11, 2006 @ 07:15:57
I think this one is available in the US now. A very generous friend let me borrow the copy she bought through (I think)Amazon.ca.
May 11, 2006 @ 07:33:41
I meant to say that the book that I read was The Greatest Knight – William Marshal: a Novel of a Legendary Man
May 11, 2006 @ 10:23:04
I LOVE Elizabeth Chadwick and will have to try and find a copy of this one, I didn’t realize it had been released here in the States. The last Chadwick I got was from a book trading buddy in Europe. I’m also looking forward to The Greatest Knight… Marg wrote a wonderful review of that one.
May 11, 2006 @ 19:42:25
I love this book, although it isn’t my favorite by Chadwick. After reading your review, I went to my bookshelf to pull it out for a re-read, only to remember that I lent it to a friend (more than a year ago!) and haven’t gotten it back yet. Don’t think I’m ever going to see it again, so it’s time to break down and buy a new copy.
May 11, 2006 @ 20:28:51
One of my friends has my well worn copy of Memoirs of a Geisha for going on 2 years now. Every so often she says that she needs to get me that book. I’ve since bought a replacement. LOL.
Journal of An Avid Reader » Tentative TBB List
May 12, 2006 @ 13:14:21
[...] There’s a couple of historicals one by Cheryl Sawyer that looked good, The Code of Love, in trade paperback. I have just too many of those types of books on the shelf already. Jayne did a great review of Elizabeth Chadwick’s The Falcons of Montebard. I can read that one if I want my historical fiction fix and then there’s the four or five Diana Norman books I have left to read that I hoard. [...]