The Talisman

Six-word review: Treachery and chivalry among crusading knights.

Extended review:

An old-fashioned adventure starring a young Scottish knight, his aristocratic lady fair, King Richard the Lion Heart, Sultan Saladin, and a cast of thousands. Honor and chivalry! Treachery and conspiracy! Combat and pageantry! Thwarted true lovers, noble adversaries, and a mad hermit in a desert cave, with bonus dwarves! Who could ask for more?

Some, I suppose, would ask for a modern vocabulary, a faster pace, and an amulet to heal near-lethal levels of political incorrectness. But this novel was published in 1825; it's nearly two hundred years old. So it employs a style of language that may sound a little alien to us now and a vocabulary that sent me to the show more dictionary: astucious; castramentation; emulously; ebriety. Not to mention a liberal use of terms pertaining to weaponry, armor, combat, and knightly duty. I love reading books that stretch my vocabulary, and I hope to be able to manage with the language as well as did schoolboys of a few generations back.

The rate at which the story unfolds is slow in comparison with current-day action novels. And it is an action novel; it's certainly not about deep probing of character or subtle exploration of themes. It starts right off with a scene of single combat. What's different is that all that thrilling, fast-moving excitement seems to take place in slow motion while we get both description and a lot of atmospheric dialogue that doesn't advance the plot. It's not so much a matter of a slow pace as it is of a great quantity of detailed, unfashionable telling. This is how Scott told his stories, and he was not alone in this. If it's not what we're used to now, that doesn't mean it wasn't the norm then. Neither is a steamboat our customary mode of travel; but when we're on a steamboat, we don't expect it to move like a bullet train. We do best just to settle into it and go with it as it is. When I read Scott this way, I enjoy him very much.

As for political correctness: social attitudes among the reading audience in Scotland and England in the early 1800s were not very much like those in the United States of the twenty-first century. At the time, the U.S. as a nation was less than 50 years old, and the Civil War was still nearly forty years in the future. I may cringe at the language and treatment used toward people not of the race or class or condition of the privileged and educated reader, and toward those of the so-called weaker sex, but I don't condemn those who held the prevailing views of their time and place and were unconscious of any offense. I think we have to be able to read through those things if we're to have any perspective at all on where we've come from. That doesn't mean condoning anything that we view as wrong; it just means recognizing that the views of enlightened, civilized beings vary over time as well as over distance, and we think differently now from Scott and his contemporaries. Think how disgraceful it would be if we hadn't raised our standards in all that time.

This novel takes place in Palestine during the Crusades while a temporary truce is in effect between the European forces, led by King Richard of England, known as the Lion Heart, and the Saracens under Saladin, Sultan and sovereign of Egypt and Syria. An honorable young knight, famed for his prowess in combat, becomes an unwitting pawn in a treasonous political scheme by Richard's rivals through his innocent devotion to the lady of his heart. Meanwhile, Richard is treated in his illness by a Saracen healer who seems to possess special powers.

The Talisman is the fourth Scott novel I've read and the one I'm most inclined to compare with Ivanhoe, published five years earlier. The hero, Sir Kenneth of the Couching Leopard, is far less vexing than Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe, and the heroine, Lady Edith, is not nearly as insipid as Lady Rowena. The battles play out in the tents rather than on the field, and the villains are not where you'd expect to look for them: Richard's supposed allies are less trustworthy than his arch-foe. As depicted here, Saladin is an honorable and admirable adversary, and there is ample respect shown between the two rulers. The character of King Richard also adds an interesting dimension; certainly he appears more heroic and virtuous than he is painted by history, but he is well endowed with character flaws.

The drama does get a bit corny, I'll admit, and there's an extra helping of characters in disguise whose revealed identities lead to sudden shifts in the plot. But I didn't mind any of that. Again, I was not expecting the style and conventions of modern novels. Rather, I enjoyed the trip into what nineteenth-century readers were consuming, as well as the imaginary leap into an unabashedly imaginary desert war in the twelfth century. Really, this is a historical fantasy as envisioned by a wildly popular author of two centuries ago. Just as with its successful modern counterparts, it creates a world that I missed after I left it. show less

Kicsit nehezen haladtam vele, aztán a középső rész magával ragadott, majd a befejezés ismét lelassított. Régen olvastam már lovagregényt, a férfiúi erények hosszas ecsetelését, a becsület, a lelki nemesség és a testi egészség összhangjának rajzát.

An enjoyable story with lots of chivalry, intrigue, big reveals, heroic deeds, romance, action, and exotic themes and characters. Was a little dull, however, despite all of that.

An early nineteenth century combat novel, it also lays down the stereotypes of several Third Crusade personalities. It is also a hatchet job on the character and motives of a serious man of action, Conrad of Montferrat, who is worthy of more respect in the English-speaking world. Read several times. written in 1825 but still...

I found the plot a bit too thin for a novel, and it's fairly predictable. Also the various disguises stretch credulity to the limit.

It's worth reading, but I think Ivanhoe is a much better novel in comparison.

For my money, Walter Scott's best, even better than Rob Roy or Ivanhoe. This novel about the crusades features Saladin as a heroic enemy and Templars as evil villains.

What an excellent thing to have read nearly all the Waverley novels. At your age I had read only the medieval ones (Ivanhoe, Q. Durward, The talisman etc) and didn't discover the more modern ones (Waverley, G. Mannering, Antiquary etc.) till I was at Oxford. I now like those in the second list better than those in the first, but I think both lots very good and never get tired of them. What I like is that Scott doesn't skimp things, but tells you how everyone was dressed and what they ate and drank and what sort of houses they lived in, and the weather - which is what I always want to know though some people find it boring.
- from a 29 December 1948 letter to 15-year-old Laurence Harwood, The collected letters of C.S. Lewis, volume show more II

...it is one of [Scott's] poorest: the rapid episodes and impossible disguises remind us of what monstrosities the Romantic movement could and did commit in its infancy. I imagine Walpole's 'Castle of Otranto' and the 'really horrid' Gothic romances of [Ann Radcliffe, author of The mysteries of Udolpho] were something in this style. The subject however is fascinating, and Saladin is a great figure.
- from a 14 July 1919 letter to Arthur Greeves, in The collected letters of C.S. Lewis, volume I show less