Blood and Archers. (Harlequin - Bernard Cornwell)

Member Name: KingHerrod

Product:	Harlequin - Bernard Cornwell
Date:	04/09/01 (156 review reads)
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Sharpe, heard of him? You must have, the TV series, Sean Bean, all decked out in that soldier’s uniform, looking like the piece of rough that all ladies want (or so I am told.) Well to the non-literary TV watching of you out there, Sharpe was derived from a series of books written by Bernard Cornwell. You, the reader may be wondering what I am going on about, well I too often wonder about that, but Cornwell is famous for the Sharpe series of books, but methinks he became a tad bored with writing about Sharpe and has now branched into a new series of books called the Grail Quest and Harlequin is the first book in this series. Just to put Mr Cornwell in context, before he became a best selling novelist his career was TV, as a producer on current affairs programmes, such as Nationwide and Thames at Six; despite being British, he is one of those defectors and now lives across the pond in the United States.

Cornwell writes solely historical fiction, by that I mean he sets his books, not in the present or future, but in the past, usually around events that have made an historical impact. With Sharpe it was the Napoleonic Wars and with the Grail Quest we are led into the period immediately before the hundred years war. We are talking 14th century, an era of knights, of Prince Edward (the Black Prince), bow men, and savage war between England and France. This was the time when the English armies, devastated France, laying waste to its towns and villages, scouring the land, leaving destruction and terror in its wake.

The historical setting complete, interwoven into real historical events is a plot centring on Thomas of Hookton, a young man, clever, son of a mad priest, connected by blood to an old aristocratic French family and determined not to be a priest himself. When his village is sacked and left destitute by a French raiding party, he promises his dying father that he will seek out the relic stolen by the raiders. Seeking revenge on the
French and an outlet for his enraged youthful zest Thomas joins the army as a longbow man, known to the French as the Hellequin (lost souls, favoured by the Devil and released by him onto the planet to inflict suffering.) The irony of the title derives from the fact that the man who stole the relic from Hookton is known as the Harlequin, the Italian version of the French word Hellequin.

Driven by his vow to his father Thomas inflicts pain on the French, wielding his longbow with deadly accuracy as the English army rampages across Northern France. His intelligence marks him out as somebody with more to him than the common thieves and murderers that populate the English army of the time and his skills bring him recognition by the noblemen and of course he makes enemies both within his own camp and on the French side. Romantic interest abounds, but will his status as a common man hold him back, or will the aristocratic French ladies see him as a noble bit of rough?

Harlequin, is at all times heading towards the battle of Crecy, a famous English victory, where the English routed a poorly organised superior French army. To be honest there is not much depth to the plot, the English army rampages and sacks towns, there are bloody battles, Thomas seems to live a charmed existence and gets the ladies and the majority of the aristocracy are portrayed as selfish pigs, with money on the mind.

Cornwell writes with a tight style and a skill for fast paced story telling, but despite the pace of the story, there was far too much emphasis on the battle and the equipment and not enough on the characters themselves. Thomas is a stereotypical hero in the Sharpe mould, brave, decent, a gentleman amongst thieves, handsome, mysterious…..are you getting the idea. Thomas is a character with one dimension and nothing that he did in the novel surprised me.

In fact, in part Harlequin reads as a traditional adventure novel, but where it rises abo
ve this is in its historical accuracy. It is clear from the book that Cornwell researched many aspects of medieval life and warfare, how a town would be set out, how it would be defended, which noblemen were at which battle how the long bow men would be used in battle and how had the battle been won. Sculpted onto this is Thomas’s quest to avenge his father, but in this book this seems to take second place to the battles. This is a tale of revenge, but the desire for revenge does not seem to burn brightly enough in the book, it seems to be a side issue, when it should have been the driving force for the story.

The longbow man was the instrument of war in the fourteenth century, accurate and deadly, a troop of 100 or so archers could stop an advancing force of knights at will with a hail of deadly arrows, faster to re-load than the French weapon of choice the cross-bow, Harlequin demonstrates the power of the archer and its effectiveness in warfare.

But saying this, this book is not to my taste, it is bloody, it is full of battles and heroes, but the characters are so stereotypical that there are no surprises, there is the evil bad nobleman on both sides, the valiant Englishmen and the valiant Frenchmen. I just like a book that explores character more than event and Harlequin leaves character very much unexplored. At times I enjoyed the read, but it will not stick in the memory, there are probably 100 books almost the same that you could pick up in a bookstore and the lack of originality makes this book average. If you liked Sharpe, you will like this and the historical details are interesting (although you never really know what artistic licence Cornwell has taken with them, unless you have studied this period of history in great detail, which I have not.) I got bored with this book and was glad when it was finished. If you like blood and gore in your book and like adventure novels this is a good one, but to me, I say not for me.


Geoffrey the mad mohican giraffe read this one after me, he liked it, he liked the battles the stabbing the gore and the wild men wielding battle axes. In fact, he collected all our old cereal boxes and made himself a suit of armour and ran around the house chasing Bradley the sad looking basset hound calling him a Frenchie and generally terroising the poor dog. Thankfully it is back to school now!

Harlequin is published by Harper Collins, is 478 pages long and costs £5.99 in paperback.

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