The Best of The Review: Favorite Posts From the First Half Year (Volume VI)

Sworn Sword~~by James Aitcheson

Marsha writes, "I picked Paula's review of Sworn Sword because the review inspired me to purchase the book which I enjoyed immensely. I love the Conquest time frame and was happy to have a new author to explore. I am looking forward to purchasing the rest of the series."

Sworn Sword sweeps us into the 11thc just as the English are on the rise after their devastating defeat at Hastings just over two years before. From the outset we are thrust into a world of where life depends on who wins the battles.  Bloodshed and loss is now a way of life for most people since William of Normandy clawed the English crown from the head of the  usurper’, Harold Godwinson.  

With the opening focusing on an English uprising in the streets of Dunholm, strong hold of Robert de Commines, Lord of the North, we meet our protagonist, Tancred, a Breton, commanding his own conroi. Tancred and his comrades have been trying to fight off the attack when Tancred hears that his beloved Oswynn Is murdered by the marauders; but there is no time to grieve, for he must save his lord, Robert, set upon with his men in the mead hall. Tancred leads his conroi to the rescue but they are too late and Lord Robert is burned alive with his comrades inside the blazing  hall. The Normans are slaughtered almost to a man, but Tancred, who has been badly injured, is carried by his surviving friends Eudo and Wace to the relative safety of York. There the trio find refuge in the house of Robert’s vicomte, Guillaume (William) Malet.

Tancred spends some time under the care of Malet’s priest, Aelfwold who tends his patient’s wounds and saves him from developing a life threatening infection. When he is well, Malet gives the now lordless knight an ultimatum: owe him a debt for the succour and hospitality he had provided him with, or carry out a mission  that would set him free of any obligation owed. Reluctantly, he accepts, for he would rather stay behind in York to exact revenge upon the English who killed his lord and his woman Oswynn. But little did he realise when he gave his oath to Malet, that he would become embroiled in a secret that holds the fate of the kingdom in the balance...

I approached this novel with caution, a) because I am a die-hard Anglo-Saxon supporter and b) because the Normans did terrible things to the English during the invasion, so when I realised this was going to be a story told from the point of view of one of the invaders, I was unsure as to whether or not I was going to enjoy it.  It’s not that I am so narrow minded I can’t enjoy a book from any other viewpoint other than the English one, it is that I didn’t want to read something that promoted the Norman invasion as a good thing and that William was a good guy fighting for his rights, and by the shedding of much English blood, winds up on the English throne. Although Tancred fought on the Conqueror’s side at the Battle of Hastings, he views the English with suspicion and believes that the rightful King now sits on the throne, this is a book that tells the story of one man’s journey to find a new purpose to his life, now that his beloved lord is no longer in the world.

What I liked about James Aitcheson’s portrayal of an England in the aftermath of Hastings, is that it shows the reader how the scene would have looked to just such a man, especially as it is written in the first person, without making it heavily pro-Norman or pro- English. Although the latter are seen as pretty much the bad guys in a way, and the former as the righteous, it’s understandable, because we are seeing it from Tancred’s point of view and as far as he is concerned, he and his comrades are vindicated, for they represent loyal supporters of the rightful King, assisting him in keeping the peace in his new kingdom that was bequeathed to him, quite honourably by his cousin Edward, and stolen from him by the usurper Harold Godwinson. Presented as thus, I found it easy to glide into the story from the start.

  

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Paula's People with Simon Stirling

"I picked Paula's piece with Simon about Shakespeare because it was so interesting and I am fascinated by Simon's ideas. I would really like to delve more into Shakespeare's life and plan on purchasing Simon's book."

*********                                                               

Thanks to Simon for coming along and being a guest on Paula's People. Simon discusses the ideas that spawned his latest novel Who Killed William Shakespeare?  


I was chatting to (chatting up?) a Canadian student at my drama school in London, one day.
“So – got anything planned for this weekend?”              

“Yeah, we’re all going up to Stratford-upon-Avon.  We’re seeing a show at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, and we get the Shakespeare tour.”

It was part of the one-year course for overseas students: the Stratford Weekend.  And that’s when it struck me.  To lovers of theatre, and literature, all over the world, Stratford is a kind of Mecca.
And there was me thinking it was a place you went to on a Sunday afternoon.
I’ve spent a great deal of my life in and around Shakespeare’s hometown.  It’s given me a different perspective on the ‘Sweet swan of Avon’.  Time after time, reading biographies of William Shakespeare, I was struck by how little interest the biographer had in Shakespeare’s native region, his family connections, the knotty network of friends and co-religionists which made Warwickshire such a tribal county.
London has changed since Shakespeare’s day.  But much of his home county hasn’t altered that much.  You can get closer to Shakespeare in the lanes around Baddesley Clinton or Earls Common than you ever can on the banks of the Thames.
When I started studying Shakespeare in the late-1980s, hoping to understand how a lad from the Midlands became the world’s greatest poet-playwright, I found it all a frustrating experience.  “We know so little about him!” seemed to be the cry on every Shakespeare scholar’s lips.  Twenty-five years on, I’ve come to believe that this mantra is anything but true.  By refusing to concentrate on his London days, I was able to uncover several new facts about Shakespeare’s life.  A whole new picture emerged – more ‘real’, if you will, and certainly more intriguing.  Downright scary, at times.

But the mythology of Shakespeare forms most of what we know, or think we know, or are told to think we know, about this brilliant man.  To engage properly with Shakespeare is to enter the terrifying world of Tudor and Jacobean politics, something unnervingly close to a police state, and the sheer brutality of the repression of those who adhered to the Catholic faith, as their forefathers had done for a thousand years.  It is to enter a period of great upheaval, a massive redistribution of wealth, the remorseless rise of a new political class and a casual recourse to murderous violence.  It was a time of fear and favour, of propaganda and prejudice.

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PAULA READS: SWORN SWORD By James Aitcheson

Sworn Sword sweeps us into the 11thc just as the English are on the rise after their devastating defeat at Hastings just over two years before. From the outset we are thrust into a world of where life depends on who wins the battles.  Bloodshed and loss is now a way of life for most people since William of Normandy clawed the English crown from the head of the  usurper’, Harold Godwinson.  

The Death of Harold on the BT

With the opening focusing on an English uprising in the streets of Dunholm, strong hold of Robert de Commines, Lord of the North, we meet our protagonist, Tancred, a Breton, commanding his own conroi. Tancred and his comrades have been trying to fight off the attack when Tancred hears that his beloved Oswynn Is murdered by the marauders; but there is no time to grieve, for he must save his lord, Robert, set upon with his men in the mead hall. Tancred leads his conroi to the rescue but they are too late and Lord Robert is burned alive with his comrades inside the blazing  hall. The Normans are slaughtered almost to a man, but Tancred, who has been badly injured, is carried by his surviving friends Eudo and Wace to the relative safety of York. There the trio find refuge in the house of Robert’s vicomte, Guillaume (William) Malet.

The Conroi

Tancred spends some time under the care of Malet’s priest, Aelfwold who tends his patient’s wounds and saves him from developing a life threatening infection. When he is well, Malet gives the now lordless knight an ultimatum: owe him a debt for the succour and hospitality he had provided him with, or carry out a mission  that would set him free of any obligation owed. Reluctantly, he accepts, for he would rather stay behind in York to exact revenge upon the English who killed his lord and his woman Oswynn. But little did he realise when he gave his oath to Malet, that he would become embroiled in a secret that holds the fate of the kingdom in the balance...

I approached this novel with caution, a) because I am a die-hard Anglo-Saxon supporter and b) because the Normans did terrible things to the English during the invasion, so when I realised this was going to be a story told from the point of view of one of the invaders, I was unsure as to whether or not I was going to enjoy it.  It’s not that I am so narrow minded I can’t enjoy a book from any other viewpoint other than the English one, it is that I didn’t want to read something that promoted the Norman invasion as a good thing and that William was a good guy fighting for his rights, and by the shedding of much English blood, winds up on the English throne. Although Tancred fought on the Conqueror’s side at the Battle of Hastings, he views the English with suspicion and believes that the rightful King now sits on the throne, this is a book that tells the story of one man’s journey to find a new purpose to his life, now that his beloved lord is no longer in the world.

What I liked about James Aitcheson’s portrayal of an England in the aftermath of Hastings, is that it shows the reader how the scene would have looked to just such a man, especially as it is written in the first person, without making it heavily pro-Norman or pro- English. Although the latter are seen as pretty much the bad guys in a way, and the former as the righteous, it’s understandable, because we are seeing it from Tancred’s point of view and as far as he is concerned, he and his comrades are vindicated, for they represent loyal supporters of the rightful King, assisting him in keeping the peace in his new kingdom that was bequeathed to him, quite honourably by his cousin Edward, and stolen from him by the usurper Harold Godwinson. Presented as thus, I found it easy to glide into the story from the start.

  

Tancred himself is portrayed as a battle hardened, traumatised character who, having lived through the horrors of Hastings, loses his lord and beloved in that one night at the siege of Dunholm.  Lord Robert had taken him into his service and saved him from a life of poverty and starvation when he was a young run away from the cruel monastery he had been brought up in. Oswynn was the English girl who he had taken as his lover and Tancred, devastated by both losses, swears vengeance on the young, arrogant claimant to the throne, Eadgar Atheling, the perpetrator of their deaths.  The design of vengeance and the need to atone for not preventing their murders embeds itself throughout the book and sets the theme for the sequel, Splintered Kingdom.  

Tancred is a likeable character, although at times morose and stubborn. In swearing an oath to the man who he is indebted to for saving his life, he is set upon a course that will force him to examine his own values  in order to find a new purpose in life after Commines death. He is like a lost soul, searching for his rightful place in the world and along his journey, we meet the beautiful, but changeable Beatrice, who appears to be hiding a tragic past of her own.  Their relationship seems doomed as Beatrice’s impenetrable facade and Tancred’s equal aloofness, makes their liaison a difficult one although they are both inexplicably drawn to each other.

We also meet Aelfwold, the priest who saves Tancred’s life with his healing skills. Aelfwold comes across as a gentle, loyal servant of Malet’s, charged with a secret mission for his lord in which Tancred is forced to become involved. Malet extracts an oath out of Tancred to pay back the debt he owes to him, by accompanying Beatrice and her mother to safety in London when Eadgar’s forces threaten York.  But the mission doesn’t finish there, Tancred must continue to Wilton with Aelfwold who has a message for a mysterious woman about a ‘body’.  Tancred and his friends, Eudo and Wace become suspicious of Aelfwold. Is he the amiable holy man he appears to be, or is there something more sinister lurking beneath his priest’s mantle?

The medieval priest

So, to summarise, Sworn Sword is a great read, an engaging plot, interesting characters and a couple of great battles, one which marks the end of the book and paves the way for Tancred’s next adventure. Mostly this book is very enjoyable and I am looking forward to read the next books in the series. There were a couple of things, however, that raised my eyebrows, but they were only minor: one was the cheek-plates on Eadgar’s helmet and being a re-enactor I know that these Coppergate type of helms were not likely to have been worn in the 11thc but belong to a much earlier time. Also the description of a two storey monastery building with a long corridor and  rooms leading off it sounded more like a Gothic manor than an pre-Norman building. However these are the most negative things I could probably find and certainly do not spoil what is a fantastic debut and story. I highly recommend this book especially to those who are looking for good quality historical fiction about the consequences of the Norman Invasion on England as a whole.

Author James Aitcheson

            ***If you would like to download the first chapter of Sworn Sword, click here***

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This review was written by Paula Lofting
Paula Lofting is the author of Sons of the Wolf a novel also set in 11thc England before the conquest and is told through the eyes of an English warrior Wulfhere. 

If you would like your book reviewed by Paula or one of the Review Team, please see our Submissions Page

PAULA'S PEOPLE: AN INTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR JAMES AITCHESON

Welcome to Paula's People, James, thanks so much for coming along today and for allowing me to interview you. First off...  

What influenced you to write from the invader’s point of view; was it a conscious decision? And what made you decide to write in the first person?

It was very much a conscious decision to write from the point of view of the invaders. There is a tendency nowadays in England to identify with the Anglo-Saxons, and to cast the Normans universally as villains. I wanted to show the Conquest in a new light and escape the traditional distinction that’s often drawn between the valorous English and the repressive Normans. In reality there was good and evil to be found on both sides of the conflict.
To begin with I experimented with writing in both the third and the first person, but the latter just felt right. The first person allowed me to get more completely inside the head of my narrator, Tancred. Once I saw the world through his eyes and inhabited his thought-world, a distinctive voice very quickly emerged. After that I didn’t look back.

Sworn Sword is your first novel in the series about the Breton knight Tancred.  What made you choose a Breton for your main protagonist?

I wanted a character who was seen as something of an outsider even among the invaders themselves. Bretons and Normans had historically not always got along with each other, and even though many of the former took part in the Norman-led invasion of England in 1066 and were generously rewarded by King William for their services, they were nevertheless viewed with suspicion in many quarters. So Tancred is always struggling to achieve the recognition and respect that he feels he deserves, and along the way he makes a number of enemies among the Normans as well as the English.

What preparations did you make in creating Sworn Sword? Did you do a lot of research and what type of research did you use? 

When I first started to work on the novel that later became Sworn Sword, I’d already completed a large amount of research. I’d just graduated from Cambridge where I studied history, and my final-year dissertation had been on the Norman Conquest, so I was already very familiar with the period. As I began to write, however, I quickly discovered there was lots more that I needed to know, about aspects of eleventh-century life that I hadn’t previously explored. And so over the course of the next few years, I read up on everything from the design of Norman longships to the practice of medieval medicine, and even mundane things such as food and drink.

Each new project now begins with a visit to the University Library in Cambridge, where I spend several days absorbing  the latest scholarship, making notes and laying the essential groundwork, in order to gain a firm grasp of the historical context. I also visit many of the locations that feature in my novels, such as the sites of the various battles, to get a feel for the lie of the land. But I also learn as I go along, investigating particular topics as and when they become important, and talking to re-enactors about specific topics. Research is very much a continual process.

William Malet is an interesting character in the book. I was intrigued by the little hints of his closeness to Harold Godwinson. I hope that we see his character develop further in the series. Can you tell us whether or not he appears again and in what role?

William Malet is one of my favourite characters in Sworn Sword, and does indeed reappear later in the series, although the focus shifts to the other principal members of his family, particularly his adult children Robert and Beatrice. Tancred’s fortunes in the first three books are closely tied with those of the Malet clan, and their rise and fall has a direct bearing on his own journey.

What are your earliest influences in historical fiction? Do you style yourself on any of them?

I wouldn’t say that I style myself on any authors in particular, although the historical novelists who particularly inspired me when I first started out include (in no particular order) Robert Harris, C. J. Sansom, Bernard Cornwell, Barry Unsworth and Kevin Crossley-Holland. They all write about different periods, and each has a unique style and voice, but they’re all equally effective at evoking a time and place very different to our own.

What is your favourite genre to read? Do you prefer historical fiction or are you not averse to other genres?

My reading tastes have always been very varied, and I wouldn’t say that I have a particular preference for any one genre. In the past year I’ve enjoyed historical, contemporary and science fiction, and have also been introduced for the first time to the works of John le Carré, which I’ve been reading voraciously.

Is there a book that has made a lasting impression on you and why? 

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. A wonderfully complex novel, depicting a dystopian world that is both frightening and all too plausible. Its effect on me was such that, after finishing it, I couldn’t bear to leave it behind, but had to go back to the beginning and read it all over again. It’s the only time I’ve ever done that. Atwood does with the English language what few other writers can; her mastery of prose and her breadth of vision never ceases to amaze me. 

Do you have a favourite historical epic film?

The obvious choice (and I know it’s a favourite of many) is Gladiator (2000), which to my mind remains unsurpassed among recent historical epics, and I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve watched it now. Other recent historical films that I rate very highly include Quentin Tarantino’s latest, Django Unchained (2012), as well as Ben Wheatley’s psychedelic A Field in England (2013), set during the English Civil War.

Even though it’s a TV series rather than a film, I also have to mention Band of Brothers (2000), the ten-part HBO miniseries charting the exploits of a company in the US Army, from D-Day to victory in  Europe. Epic in scope, and with real insight into the psychology of those who make it their business to fight, it’s a series that I keep returning to. A genuine classic.

The Splintered Kingdom is the follow up to Sworn Sword. Is there a third in the pipeline? 

The third book, Knights of the Hawk, is in fact already out in the UK, having been published in October last year. Set in the autumn of 1071, it opens during King William's campaign in the Fens against the outlaw Hereward and his band of rebels, who are holding out at Ely in a desperate last-ditch stand. As the campaign grinds to a halt and the king grows increasingly frustrated, he looks to Tancred to deliver him the victory that will bring an end to the rebellions once and for all.

How many books do you intend to have in the series?

To be honest, I’m not really sure! One thing I do know is that Tancred will be riding again in the not too distant future. Although Knights of the Hawk brings to a close one particular arc of his saga, it’s not the end of his story by any means, and I’ve got plenty more ideas for where his travels will take him in future. The Normans sought adventure all across Europe in this period, including in Italy and in the Byzantine Empire, so the next instalment could well see him seeking his fortune beyond the British Isles. In the long term I’d very much like to take Tancred on the First Crusade, although that’s still some way off yet. By that point he’d be in his mid-fifties, so perhaps a little bit old for front-line fighting!

What’s next?

I’m currently working on my fourth novel – again historical, and set in the Middle Ages. It's still in its early stages, so I can't say too much about it yet, but the ideas are flowing and needless to say I'm very excited about it. I'll be revealing a little bit more about it over the course of 2014, so keep a look out for for further details in a few months' time. 

Now just for fun, what are your preferences

Tea? Coffee?
Coffee

Savouries? Sweet?
Savoury

Wine? Beer?
Wine

Meat? Veg?
Meat

Dogs Cats?
Neither

I for one will be looking forward to reading more from James. If you would like to read a sample of James Aithcheson's book Sworn Sword, you can download a chapter by going to his website. 

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