Agincourt: A Novel by Bernard Cornwell
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Book Reviews of Agincourt: A Novel
Book Review: Cornwell brings his trademark plot and style to Henry V's most famous victory
Summary: 4 Stars
The legions of Bernard Cornwell's fans know the score when they crack one of his new novels. The hero, whether he live during the Napoleonic Wars, the American Civil War, or the Middle Ages, will be a mighty warrior from a common background. He will encounter hypocritical, treacherous figures of both secular and religious authority. He will earn the love of a beautiful woman . . . or several. And he will fight in gruesome battles.
Cornwell has used this basic outline to write some of the most entertaining historical fiction ever penned. Thanks to his wit and his eye for detail when writing a battle scene, the outline never gets old.
"Agincourt," Cornwell's latest novel, has a melancholy, bitter current running throughout its pages. While the Richard Sharpe series used humor and swashbuckling romance to lighten its occasionally gruesome pages, "Agincourt" hearkens back to Cornwell's "Stonehenge" as a fairly dark work. The reader will be hard-pressed to crack many smiles over the course of this novel.
Our hero, Nicolas Hook, is an English archer forced by fate to march with King Henry V's "army" across France. Hook earns this fate after surviving the massacre at Soissons, one of the most dastardly events of a dastardly era. The novel tracks the misery endured by Henry and his army through the waterlogged, desperate march across France to Agincourt, where Henry and his archers won eternal renown.
Kudos to Cornwell for providing us with an entertaining yet reasonably-factual treatment of this legendary battle. Shakespeare did it better, but he was not interested in historical accuracy. Agincourt deserves to be understood as a historical event, not just as the inspiration for some of the greatest lines ever penned for drama. In this effort, Cornwell succeeds magnificently.
And yet "Agincourt" is so rooted in the Cornwell trademark style and structure that it is hard to give it more than four stars. Fans of Cornwell will recognize the formula instantly.
The recent James Bond film, "Casino Royale," was hailed as a triumph because it breathed fresh life into the Bond franchise, which had fallen into a catastrophic rut. Cornwell's "rut," if he has one, is not as pronounced as the Bond films' slavish devotion to its past, but it must be said that Cornwell has adhered to his past practices with this new novel. The result is an exciting and bloody, yet familiar, novel.
Book Review: Solid historical thrills
Summary: 4 Stars
Having never read a book by Bernard Cornwell before, I wasn't sure what to expect when I picked up Agincourt. Suffice it to say that I was blown away. Agincourt is a powerful historical novel with a moving plot, fascinating lead characters, and a thrilling final battle scene that is among the best war fiction I've read.
Agincourt is history from the bottom up, focusing on a young archer named Nicholas Hook. When Hook attempts to murder a man with whom his family has had generations of blood-feud, he finds himself exiled from England, serving in the defense of Soissons in the Hundred Years' War. After Soissons falls, Hook rescues a young nun from rape and witnesses the torture and butchery of his fellow archers at the hands of the French. With the nun, Melisande, in tow, he escapes to Calais and returns to England. In England, Hook is employed by Sir John Cornewaille, a nobleman, tournament champion, and close associate of King Henry V. Still on the run from his enemies, Hook finds himself in Henry's invasion army, laying siege to the Norman city of Harfleur, and, finally, among the archers at the Battle of Agincourt.
Cornwell writes with vigor and the battle scenes--Soisson, Harfleur, Agincourt, and many skirmishes and tussles in between--are thrilling and horrifying in equal measure. He's really done his homework and it shows in his detailed descriptions of medieval battlefield brutality. Cornwell's characters are also vivid. Sir John Cornewaille in particular is well-drawn and entertaining. And Hook's story, his romance with Melisande, and his feud with the Perrill brothers and their insidious priest father, is tense and its resolution suspenseful.
I had a few problems with the book. Cornwall isn't the best writer--he falls back on cliche and clumsy dialogue tags entirely too often--and the chief villain, the rapacious, hypocritical priest Sir Martin, is the most tired medieval cliche available. In fact, it is clear all the way through that Cornwell doesn't like Christians at all--he even puts modern pantheistic ideas into the mouth of the one normal priest character. But Cornwell's story and the action are so strong that they easily outweighed my misgivings about his style. I don't know if his other books are better-written, but after reading Agincourt I'll find out. Agincourt was thrilling--some of the best historical fiction I've ever read.
Highly recommended.
Book Review: We Few, We Proud, We Band of Readers
Summary: 4 Stars
When I hear reviewers say that 'No one understands the experience of the common soldier better than Bernard Cornwell' or something similar, I smile and think, 'Yeah, well how about the common soldier? And by that, I mean the Infantry 'grunt' who wields a modern sword, still sleeps in mud and filth, and endures ordeals and trials the likes of which most people will only ever read about. It's just possible he might have a clue.
Having said that, let me add that no WRITER understands the experience of the common soldier better than Bernard Cornwell. He's the Ernie Pyle of, oh, let's see- the Viking raids, Napoleonic wars, the Middle Ages, and the American War Between the States (or for my Southern friends- 'The War of Northern Aggression). In short, Cornwell gets it right; the pride, the rage, the pain, the loss and the soul sucking weariness in the aftermath of battle.
AGINCOURT is his latest novel and his latest educational look at a battle that inspired so many writers and historians. Here we find young Nicholas Hook, an archer who...nevermind.
Don't you just hate it when some smug reviewer gives away too much of the plot before you've had a chance to read the book? 'Who would've known that such is such is really the bad guy, he or she dies, or here's how the major battle ends?
I don't know, the reader, for one. You're really capable of making up our own mind about what you like and/or the why behind why you like it.
So, I'll just say that if you're a Cornwell fan, you'll enjoy the book. He seldom skimps on storyline.
And if you're familiar with his themes then you already know that there has to be a troubled young soldier, more than a few fierce battles and close calls, revenge, of course, and a young woman who makes his arrow's quiver (sorry but I did avoid punning with the word 'shaft').
Typical too of Cornwell's writing is that there is also good history to be found in whatever era he sets his story. He does his homework so that we don't have to.
Finally, and this probably won't count for much but as a former common soldier, a lowly 'grunt' who took part in a distant war, in several close fierce battles, and bled on nameless battle fields a few times, I find Bernard Cornwell's work to be exceptional.
Book Review: The French never learn, I guess -- not in the 15th century, anyway
Summary: 4 Stars
The Battle of Agincourt, on St. Crispins's Day, October, 1415, is almost legendary among military encounters -- especially those that took place in the long, long struggle between England and France. A force of maybe 6,000 Englishmen (the majority of them archers), led by the energetic Henry V, met and heavily defeated an army of some 30,000 French knights and men-at-arms. The French aristocracy was practically destroyed while the English suffered no more than a few hundred casualties. Cornwell's prose can get a little purple around the edges at times, but there's no better author working today when it comes to describing land battles, making them come alive, and explaining the tactics and strategy without ever quite appearing to do so. The focus of the story is Nick Hook, a forester for the lord of a small village who is also one of the most talented bowmen in England. To escape a feud, as well as the punishment for striking a priest, he takes work as a mercenary in Soissons the year before and barely escapes when that city is sacked by the French themselves. He gets recruited for the king's expedition back across the Channel -- Henry has a claim on the French throne and he means to pursue it -- and finds himself in the van from the landing near Harfleur to the final act in the plowed fields near the minor castle of Agincourt. He's not really as fully developed a character as he might have been, but the two main "characters" in the story are actually the English and French armies. The English had archers, the product of decades of dedicated training in villages and towns throughout the island, who could get off twelve to fifteen arrows a minute. Multiplied by five thousand archers, that's six thousand arrows in sixty seconds. They also had the highly charismatic King Henry, while the French were sorely lacking in the leadership department. Finally, there was the weather. A downpour across the newly-plowed fields the night before meant the heavily-armored French had to struggle through calf-deep mud to reach the enemy. The result was something you would think the French would have learned to avoid after Crecy and Poitiers, but no. This book doesn't have the swashbuckling and angst fans of the "Sharpe" series might expect, but it's good read.Book Review: First time Cornwell reader says "Bravo!"
Summary: 4 Stars
"Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood"
Picked up a copy after a good review in the Wall Street Journal, and of course, because Henry V is a favorite. Could this author paint in prose what the Bard of Avon brilliantly brought to life in iambic pentameter? Would Cornwell's troops match Willy Shakespeare's band of brothers?
Well, yes and no. Without spoiling it, don't wait for the rousing speeches from Hal. King Henry is in the trenches alongside his men, paints the cause a holy one, and provides unmistakable leadership to the English, something the French troops notably lacked. But this King Henry does not work up to an Act III exhortation, nor is Cornwell's perspective focused on the royal court.
Instead we follow Nick Hook, simple peasant class farmer, branded "outlaw" by unfortunate events, into a life as archer in the King's army. Nick leads us on a yarn that encompasses royally supported religious intolerance in England, bloodthirsty savagery and betrayal at Soissons France, the miserable siege at Harfleur and ultimately the famous battle at Agincourt. His band of immediate brothers includes not the Dukes of Gloucester and Bedford (though they make appearances,) but Will and Tom Scarlet, William of the Dale, big Will Sclate and other country boys right out of Robin Hood. Nick is a muscular and expert longbowman, and an erstwhile leader of common men. His favorite backup to his superbly crafted longbow? A poleax, which he uses graphically. Hook finds a mentor in Sir John Cornewaille, the European tournament champion and master of martial fighting whose constant exhortation is "Kill, kill, kill!"
This is a blood and guts tale, and Cornwell takes us in on a tight shot: recall Spielberg's first half hour in "Saving Private Ryan". Unjust nobility and ungodly priests command the day. Dysentery, rape, maiming and murder...mere daily survival is never assured.
Strap on your casque and gird your loins, this page-turner is not chick lit.