The Astronomer

The Astronomer

By Lawrence Goldstone

Extremely mild spoilers ahead, though if the spoiler I reveal ruins the book for you, I sincerely suggest you brush up on your history. Tsk tsk.

Historical fiction can be an unforgiving genre. Writers have to walk that fine line between historical accuracy and a good story. If the writer focuses too much on historical authenticity he/she tends to allow the pace of the novel to lag, alienating the reader from the actual narrative. To little attention to historical detail and the reader will view the novel with a degree of consternation. I tend to fall on the side of a good story and to hell with authenticity, but that's just me. But truly bad historical fiction is that which hold no regard for neither historical accuracy nor a good narrative. Lawrence Goldstone's novel The Astronomer is one such novel.

The Astronomer is set in the early days of the Reformation. Martin Luther is still alive and preaching in the German states. John Calvin is touring Europe making a name for himself and the ultra-corrupt Catholic Church under Pope Clement VII is ill-equipped to handle the burgeoning new heresies gaining popularity throughout Europe. Heady days indeed.

Amaury is the bastard son of the Duke of Savoy and a middling theology student at the College de Montaigu in Paris. He is more interested in the rapidly expanding field of science than the stifling study of scripture. This mildly-heretical behavior has not gone unnoticed by the school's faculty who recommend Amaury to the French Grand Inquisitor of France Mattieu Ory to spy on French Lutherans (they are not yet referred to as Protestants or Calvinists) as there are rumors that the Lutherans are in possession of a secret that will disprove Genesis itself (the (not so) secret information is Copernicus's heliocentric theory of the universe, if you are wondering. I fear that Gladstone was building a mystery here but it was so plainly obvious from the opening pages, much of the suspense was lost due to the transparency of said secret). Amaury has to decide between his dedication to the Church, his sympathies to the reformation and his love of scientific research.

What starts as a lumbering story that meanders all over the place ends up being an action film starring Nicholas Copernicus (no doubt played by a CGI enhanced Sean Connery).

While I don't really want to harp too much on Lawrence Goldstone since he has written far more books than I have, but I have some real problems with this book. First and foremost is the pace. Goldstone bogs the narrative down with loads of unnecessary descriptions of settings, clothing and weather as well as loads of unnecessary characters that have no emotional connection to the reader thus rendering them two-dimensional. The narrative seemed to slow to a crawl when it begged for a quick pace (i.e. the excruciatingly long overland trip from Paris to Nerac) and it would mysteriously speed up when attention to detail would have been appreciated (i.e. the riots in the streets of Paris).

Furthermore, story lines seemed to pop up out of nowhere, amble along for a while only to be discarded without sufficient closure. Characters appear as suddenly as they disappear and their motives are often opaque. Francois, the king of France is wholly unnecessary character who could have been replaced by a quick narrative update on the happenings in France. The secondary characters don't fair much better. At one point in the novel Amaury spends pages and pages trying acquire the necessary documentation from the cardinal to save his bookseller friend only to watch him burn at the stake for heresy over the course of a quarter page. All the while it is never really revealed why Amaury would risk his life for a bookseller friend.

And while I'm not adverse to a love interest, the fact that Amaury is able to bed not one but two decidedly un-medeival women (i.e. in possession of a full set of teeth, unblemished skin and uncommonly large vocabularies considering their stations in the social hierarchy) in the course of a few weeks seems implausible, even for someone like me who is fully prepared to suspend my disbelief. And not to labor the point, but the fact that Amaury doesn't trust a single person throughout the entire narrative but trusts both Vivienne and Helene unequivocally. The complete lack of sexual tension in this love triangle is simply icing on the proverbial turd.

Listen, Goldstone's not a terrible writer. I suspect he's got a good book out there, either in print or in the works. But The Astronomer is not it. This entire novel seems slapdash and careless, as if he ripped it off over a weekend or two between episodes of Game of Thrones. It fails spectacularly as both a piece of historical fiction and as compelling narrative. Tough break. And while I don't expect that every single narrative tangent must circle back to the main story line, but a few certainly must. And while this isn't the worst book I've ever read, if I have a hankering for historical fiction set in the medieval era I will stick with Bernard Cornwall and Ken Follett.

Cool cover, though.

The Archer's Tale

The Archer's Tale: Grail Quest #1

By Bernard Cornwell

Before I get to the book, I have something to announce:

Turns out I won an award. First a jar of jam at a bake sale when I was 11, now this!

The good people over at Bibliomania (if you haven't been over that way, you really should. Fantastic book blog) have given me something called the Leibster Award. Liebster is a German word for beloved. The award is given to beloved blogs with under 200 followers. These blogs are meant to be "the best kept secrets" out there. 


I am sincerely flattered that someone dropped by and thought to bestow anything on this here little blog. Can't say I much like the little heart on the Award Badge, but the sentiment is wonderful.


From here I am supposed to pass the award on, so to speak. I am asked to present this award to up to five other blogs with less than 200 followers. Unfortunately, the good people over at Bibliomania bestowed this award on many of the blogs I would have otherwise honored. All except one, so I have the great honor of presenting a Leibster Award to:


Literati Reflections


OK, back to our regularly scheduled program.


I like Bernard Cornwell because I like historical fiction. I have read a two of his novels over the past two years (Azincourt and The Last Kingdom) and while I have not fallen head over heels into his numerous series, I really appreciate the historical accuracy and detail that he crams into his work, especially his ability to make Medieval Europe come to life. Medieval Europe is one of the most misunderstood eras in Western history and Cornwell goes a long way toward clearing up a lot of misconceptions.


The Archer's Tale (or Harlequin as my copy is called, because it's from England) is the first novel in Cornwell's Grail Quest series. The series centers around the, well, you can figure that out. This particular novel centers on Thomas, the son of a (suspiciously randy) priest in a tiny village on the south coast of England. When the French sack and raze the village and take off with the church's vaunted holy relic (The Lance of St. George), Thomas is inconsolable and trundles off in pursuit.


Along the way, he becomes an archer in King Edward's invading army (these are the early days of the Hundred Year's War and England is laying waste to Brittany, Gascony, Normandy and Flanders). He runs afoul of the English gentry, beds a French noblewoman, gets hanged, learns his true ancestry from a mystical Jewish physician and a dark secret about the stole lance and its association with the holiest of holy relics: The Holy Grail. It all seems like a little much for a small town archer, but you have to suspend your disbelief a little bit, right? 


A little. But not too much. For me, Grail lore can be tricky. It makes for great adventure stories (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) and classic comedy (Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Grail) but when it is discussed with a certain degree of seriousness, writers tend to lose me. It's gone, people. Gone. Disintegrated. It is no more! (That is, if it even existed in the first place). Besides, virtually every single relic on the planet could simply be (and most likely is) a random tooth or hair or splinter of wood some Crusader picked off a battlefield in the Holy Land, brought back to Shit-In-The-Woods, France and declared that it was the molar, follicle or shield of St. Paul or St. Thomas or Christ himself. It's a ridiculous industry based in fakery and inanity that could only have existed in a the religious vice grip that was Medeival Europe. And don't even get me started on Dan Brown's nonsense from The Da Vinci Code.


So I was a little apprehensive with Cornwell incorporating Grail lore in what was otherwise a fairly accurate account of the High Middle Ages. I enjoyed reading about the fear and carnage that the longbow inflicted on the French army, a military innovation every bit as game-changing as the atomic bomb would be almost 700 years later (and the ineptitude of Genoese "guns,"among the first ever used in European battles. Lots of noise, zero effect). I enjoyed the discussion on the insanity surrounding of holy relics and was vindicated to learn that many people, including people within the church understood how absurd these morbid trinkets were. I reveled in  the talk of heresies and was enthralled in the way Cornwell kept Thomas in the thick of major historical events such as The Battle of Caen, the Battle of Blanchetaque and the famously decisive Battle of Crecy. That's the sort of stuff I sign up for when I read Cornwell.


But the Grail stuff bores me. It's all a bunch of fanciful nonsense and how an archer gets mixed up in it all seems contrived and silly. Perhaps the later books in the series tie it up a little neater, but I found that this novel held up well without all the grail crap. It just seemed to get more absurd as the book went on. Every time it came up I half expected a dwarf or an albino to go on a rant about the Templars or the Rosicrucians and invoke the power of the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch (I'm only half joking).


Mercifully, these episodes are short and far between. For the most part, Cornwell sticks to the narrative build-up to the Battle of Crecy. It is interesting to hear the personalities of the two Kings. Edward from England is a staunch, battle-hardened and stoic warrior bent on the expansion of his kingdom while King Philip of France, leader of the Europe's largest army, is shackled by nerves, indecision and superstition. The way these leaders take to the filed and command their forces is fascinating. In the hands of a lessen novelist, it could have been a disappointing climax, but Cornwell handles it adeptly. 


Much like another of Cornwell's novels, Azincourt, his account of the actual battle is so spectacular I can almost smell the blood and agony of dying soldiers and horses. He is able to pinpoint exact moves, almost down to the man, as to why the battle swung in one direction or another. I'm not usually a big fan of battle scenes in books. Most writers can't do it (they move too fast to keep straight). But Cornwell is a master of the craft. The way he describes the fog of war is sublime.  There isn't another writer out there that does it as well as Cornwell and if you haven't read one of his battle scenes, you are truly missing a great literary experience. In fact, if he isn't already, he should be given an award for Battle Writing.


Perhaps the Schlacht Award?