Leslie Barringer (1895–1968)

ORIGINALLY POSTED AT Fantasy Literature.

Raoul will one day be baron of peaceful marshy Marckmont, but until his eighteenth birthday, he’s under the protection of his Uncle Armand, Count of the bleak and windy crags of Ger. Armand has no love for the slight and introspective Raoul, and can’t understand why his nephew would rather play chess and write songs than hunt animals. Raoul, a romantic, likes to think about beautiful things, but at Ger, “you must be smothered in blood before they show more think you are a man.”

When Raoul is told he can’t go with Armand’s company to the tourney in Belsaunt, he sneaks away and visits the tourney anyway. There he sees, and instantly falls in love with, the beautiful lady Yseult de Olencourt. He is flogged when he returns to Ger, so he runs away and seeks a position in a noble house until he is old enough to claim his quiet and solitary barony.

After leaving Ger, Raoul meets the folk of the land, including a runaway murderer, a few witches, a large warrior woman with flame-red hair, the three deadliest outlaws in the area, a brave serving girl, and several lowborn life-long friends. He also has several frightening adventures in which he surprises himself with his actions. His consideration of these episodes, and the advice he receives from wise people, teach him much about life, love, men, women, and himself. For example:

* “we have oftener to choose between two wrongs than between a wrong and a right.”
* There is “none so cruel as a slave come suddenly to power.”
* “Why do men like killing, boy? Because it is an usurpation of the power of God. What God began, they have ended; red with the mortal sin of murder, they feel godlike power, and fall into the mortal sin of pride.”
* It’s the men in the army who earn the fame for their Lord.
* To gain peace, there must be war, and sometimes brutal acts are required.
* The clod looks at a woman with two eyes: “The eye of contempt, and the eye of desire. No wonder women look for gold and gear beside.”
* “For the thing which sets men naturally at each other’s throats, and the other thing which bids them blush or frown at touch of a woman’s body, there must be somewhere a reason...”
* To be noble is “to have the power, and to refrain”

Leslie Barringer’s Gerfalcon is a beautifully written and exciting coming-of-age epic with a loveable introspective hero who learns that peace has a price and that his own heart’s desires are not to be trusted. The prose, though slightly archaic, is easily read and the story is full of incisive insights into (and sometimes gentle mocking of) human behavior. Gefalcon would be a great read for a mature teenager, if you can find it (Barringer’s fantasies are out of print). Beware of the ebook version which I read (Renaissance E Books) — it’s full of typos. show less

My favourite in the trilogy.
It is considerably longer than the first two, the style is less artificially antique and the ending was a surprise. The setting is unmistakably French, even if the names are invented, but everything else is called by its proper name. The action moves away from Nordanay/Normandy and people no longer have names derived from Frankish or Norman invaders.
At the beginning I thought it was targeted at teenagers, since the main characters are then aged thirteen, but show more there's premarital sex towards the end, so, considering the original publication date, this is definitely meant for adults. Raoul of Ger from the previous novels crops up again, and there's some very nasty behaviour from the heroine's husband. A tale of medieval political intrigue and chicanery, some surprising thoughts about God and the afterlife, and the author has an amazing ability to evoke landscape and scenery. I only stumbled across one anachronism: pineapples were unknown in Europe until Columbus.
Great storytelling. show less

Stylistically it's an improvement on Gerfalcon, his sentences are less convoluted and their meaning clearer. It's also obvious that the action takes place in a disguised France/Normandy, he mentions the name once, and even gives a date which puts the tale at the beginning of the 15th century. It starts a little earlier than Gerfalcon, some events are told again from a different perspective, then it jumps ahead. It is mostly the tale of the outlaw Joris, but there is also political intrigue show more at the royal court among two rival factions. A medieval romance grounded in reality, and very, very enjoyable. show less

My dear mother, who knew I loved Barringer's Neustrian series (Gerfalcon etc.) proudly presented me wth this, and I did not have the heart to tell her it was the one Barringer novel I did not like. Barringer was originally a Quaker (though he fought in WWI) and this reads like an indictment of Henry V for war crimes, especially the treatment of the "useless mouths" trapped between the armies at the seige of Rouen. The one gentle moment is when the protagonist, now a hardened English soldier, show more spares a peasant girl who will grow up to be Joan of Arc. show less