The Firedrake

Laeghaire of the Long Road, from Tralee, no less, an Irish mercenary knight, a devil of a fighter and, well, a devil in general, finds his way, indirectly, into the employ of William of Normandy. The two make an impression on each other in the course of a Summer campaign, but to say much more than that might give things away, though I'm sure even the most casual student of history will work out where it's all headed.

This is Holland's first novel, and it shows a bit as in her first pages of terse, short sentences she's grappling with her craft and learning the difference between short sentences that are monotonous and repetitive, and short sentences interspersed with sentences of more varied length leading to an effect that would be show more praised as 'hard-boiled' in a crime novel, but which suits descriptions of deadly but prosaic men going about the business of warfare and statecraft. Laegharie is an intense, morose, driven, haunted man who is beating off bandits one minute and buying peasant girls the next; pillaging a landscape one minute, doting on his son by the bought peasant girl the next; but on the whole, Laeghaire is not destined for happiness, whether by mischance or his own love of violence, and if a happy life eludes him, then violence he gets a-plenty, waiting for him on a hill outside Hastings.

Anyway, it's superb. show less

Holland's brilliant first novel, which immediately established her as a first-rank historical novelist. The hero Laegaire is an Irish mercenary who enlists with William the Conqueror and fights at Hastings but decides afterwards for personal reasons to leave instead of enjoying William's rewards. The hero, like most of Holland's early heroes, has an attractive air of wry competence and independence.

I picked this up because Kim Stanley Robinson recommended Holland in an interview. I hate to admit I was a little disappointed. Any character the protagonist didn't love or hate was just a blur, so long stretches of the novel were little more than a tedious shuffling of minor players around the irascible centerpiece. Maybe 10 of the 243 pages really engaged me ... the rest felt like trudging over the Long Road. Maybe, it being the Dark Ages, that was the point ... but I might lay off the historical fiction for a while.