Karen Maitland really knows her stuff, working details about life in the middle ages around her story of a company travelling around England, trying to avoid an outbreak of the plague. She also manages to create a fascinating mystery - are the travellers dying one by one of unrelated causes, or is there a murderer in their midst?

Read this book on a Library Thing recommendation. I did not find it as tedious to get through as others seem to. Characters were both strong and weak in development. I felt that Adela was somewhat too cliche- not much of a backbone, and flat. However, given the main character of Camelot, this may have been on purpose, to highlight the strength of Camelot's character. Zophiel was thoroughly hateful- well developed nastiness that all makes sense when his story unfolds. Cygnus was tragic, and somewhat unbelievable in form, however, if you take in to consideration that this story was told in the character voice of the 14th century, you can believe that they would believe his existence possible. Maitland reminds us often of the unscientific beliefs of that time. Joffre was another tragic character, with concerns rooted in the 21st century. Narigorm was just about the most horrible creature I have come across in a long time. She was like a cancer; not much in the forefront, but always lurking around to come forward and be destructive. Rogidio was the saddest character- continually losing that which he values most.
Nine travelers come together through need and design. Each has dark secrets, which time and travels, and fear of the pestilence divides them from society, and ultimately each other. Forced to keep company only with each other, and a few stray outsiders, they are finally pushed into revealing their true secrets to each other. Only Narigorm remains outside the circle, using them for survival, and her not so childish game.
In the end, you are left with a truly hanging sense of, "Wait, what happened next?" and you never know for sure. The optimists of the world will fill in the void with happy endings, and "Oh, she never found out- she couldn't", and the rest of us will only imagine the darkness that the others fate became. ( )

Imagine yourself involuntarily surrounded by a small group of travelers, forced by circumstance to cut off all interaction with society. Rumors tell of cities overflowing with corpses, and no one knows the cause nor the symptoms until it’s too late. A grand pestilence has infected the ports, and the only safe direction is inland and ever north. Such is the historically fictitious medieval mystery Company of Liars by Karen Maitland.

Maitland takes her fascination of the medieval period and constructs a very convincing and entertaining story around the occurrence of the Black Plague. While citizens are dropping like flies from port to port and across the countryside, Maitland’s company of nine is forced to interact and eventually divulge their secrets, stories and lies in a wayward attempt at survival, claiming each one by one. The pestilence serves not only as the driving force behind the story, but also the invisible element highlighting just how “interesting” the times were to live in during that period. Ironically, her interpretation of Medieval England is surprisingly similar, though a bit more lively (especially in dialogue), to other apocalyptic voices such as McCarthy’s The Road. Maitland skillfully illuminates a culture of indulgences, a preponderance of predestination, Jewish scapegoating, hypocrisy and the human pathos of a medieval mindset which is not so historically distant from ours.

Vivid description is Maitland’s major strength throughout the story. Not only does she deliver a magical element to the company’s progression, she also knows how to tell a story within a story. Each character’s secrets are deftly divulged as the story flows, until the final pages whereupon the reader won’t reach an unexpected twist as much as a cathartic resolution. The story of the camelot is an impressive and engaging read. ( )

This is probably the kind of novel one enjoys despite oneself. It's far too long, for a start. The idea of nine travellers each with their own secret gives the whole thing structure as their lies are revealed one by one, but it also makes the narrative very repetitive. The novel comes replete with many hallmarks of the post-modern; the unreliable narrator, the obligatory gay character, the modern perspectives on religion and sexuality. But it doesn't feel fresh, it just feels like a box ticking exercise.

The evil child at the centre of it all remains a frustratingly one-dimensional enigma. Her motives are never fully explained and so it's impossible to evaluate her fate. On the one hand we're supposed to be cynical about the church and the power of God to intervene for plague victims, on the other hand we're supposed to believe whole-heartedly in the child's strange powers. The historical details were fairly sparse, but adding more might have made an already over long novel unbearable. A blessing in disguise.

The blurbs said "page-turner" and that certainly held true for me. Its thickness initially suggested carrying it around for a couple of weeks, in the event (largely, but not solely, thanks to a return train journey) it only took few days. I enjoyed the narrative voice and the characters in the "company of liars", who were varied and compelling. These characters live in a world where magic and myths can be part of the lived experience, and the story incorporated such elements cleverly. ( )