Just Finished Reading: Azincourt by Bernard Cornwell (FP: 2008)

England in the Year 1413 and Nicholas Hook has just failed to commit murder. Luckily for him his skill as an archer is more in demand than his body hanging from the end of a rope. But when he tries to save a heretics life he goes too far and is forced to run to France to join a company of archers who are unaware of his past. Stationed in the French city of Soissons he becomes one of the few who survive the fall of the city. Fleeing with a French nun he manages to return to the English lines only to be inducted into the great army of Henry V who is the rightful King of England and France – not that a great number of the French would agree with him. When the siege of Harfleur takes much longer than expected and dysentery thins the armies ranks the King decides to make for safe ground in Calais. Checked every step of the way by superior French forces the river Somme is finally crossed and Calais only days away. But the French have blocked the road and offer battle near a small settlement known as Azincourt, soon to become known across all Christendom as a place where arrows flew and the nobility of France fell.

Many of my readers will know that I am a serious fan of Bernard Cornwell. Indeed I think that this is the 25^th novel of his I’ve read. Richard Sharpe, the hero of the Sharpe series of books based in the Napoleonic wars of the 19^th century, is one of my all-time favourite characters. Likewise I have greatly enjoyed Cornwell’s Grail series (which takes place at the beginning of the Hundred Years war) and the Warlord Chronicles series based around the legend of King Arthur. I was rather surprised therefore that I didn’t enjoy Azincourt anywhere as much as I’d expected. Part of it was the main character Nick Hook was more than a little formulaic in my opinion. The way he picked up the French nun Melisande had too many echoes of both the experience of Thomas Hookton and Sharpe himself. The threat from both external and internal enemies I found more than a little predictable and it did feel at times that the author was going through a checklist of literary devices to produce what felt like a modular novel. I don’t know, maybe reading 10 books based in the same period (even if that lasted 1000 years) was just too much and I had become bored by the whole thing. Maybe I was just in a phase of my reading when I was a bit too critical rather than simply relaxing into the story and let it carry me along. Maybe I’m just getting old and cranky. Maybe I’ve just read too much. But whatever it was this novel felt like it had been phoned in and lacked the usual Cornwell sparkle I have come to know and trust. It is certainly the first Cornwell book that, when I closed the covers, I didn’t have a smile on my face. Not that this has put me off reading more of his work in the future. One reasonable book after 24 excellent ones certainly won’t stop me being a huge fan of his work.

This was the last book in the group of Medieval novels I had challenged myself to read. Next up, after my usual random interlude, will be 10 books with a Vampire theme. That’ll definitely be a bit different!