A Place Beyond Courage, by Elizabeth Chadwick. Book review

Sphere, 2008. ISBN 978-0-7515-3901-1. 518 pages.

Set in England and Normandy between 1130 and 1153, A Place Beyond Courage tells the story of John FitzGilbert or John Marshal, his first wife Aline Pipard and his second wife Sybilla of Salisbury. Empress Matilda, King Stephen, Henry FitzEmpress (the future Henry II) and various members of the Anglo-Norman aristocracy appear as important secondary characters. And John and Sybilla’s son William Marshal, whose story was told in the author’s previous novels The Greatest Knight (reviewed here earlier) and The Scarlet Lion, makes a memorable appearance as a young child.

John FitzGilbert holds the important official post of Marshal at the court of King Henry I, responsible for the complex logistics of supply and transport required to keep the court functioning and to move it from place to place on its frequent travels. John obtained the post partly through inheritance from his father, partly through martial prowess (he and his father once fought a duel to retain it against a challenger), and partly through his own formidable competence. A minor lord, he has no great lands of his own, and his power and wealth depend largely on his role as the royal Marshal. When Henry I dies suddenly, leaving a daughter and a nephew as rivals for the throne of England, the aristocracy divides into factions and England descends into a brutal civil war. This was a cruel period of English history, ‘when Christ and his saints slept’ according to a contemporary chronicler, when arbitrary violence ruled and there was little to check the excesses of local tyrants. For the ambitious and able John Marshal, the chaos presents both opportunity and danger.  If he judges every situation accurately, he stands not only to survive but to gain lands and influence.  But a single wrong step could cost him – and his family – everything.

In common with the other novels by Elizabeth Chadwick that I’ve read, such as The Time of Singing, The Greatest Knight and To Defy a King, A Place Beyond Courage concentrates on the characters and the relationships between them. The political and military events of the day form a context that shapes the relationships and a background against which they develop. So the conflict between Stephen and Matilda provides an opportunity for John Marshal’s ambition, military skill, ruthlessness and calculating brinkmanship to come to the fore. It also puts an intolerable strain on the meek and timid Aline Pipard, who is utterly unsuited to life in high politics and on the front line of a war. John’s opportunism brings him into conflict with his powerful neighbour Patrick of Salisbury, and this conflict in turn provides the context for his second marriage to Patrick’s sister Sybilla. And the ongoing war, combined with John’s ambition and refusal to back down, puts not only John and Sybilla at risk but also their young son William.

The novel focuses mainly on John Marshal, Aline and Sybilla – although five-year-old William Marshal comes close to stealing the show when he makes his appearance.  John Marshal is the central figure, shaping events in war and politics as well as in his personal and domestic life. Able, charismatic, resourceful and pragmatic to the point of ruthlessness, he is a hard man living in hard times. To survive, he has to be able to assess any situation and face it without flinching, from his desperate last stand at Wherwell Abbey and subsequent escape by walking miles across hostile country with a terrible face wound, to calling King Stephen’s bluff at the siege of Newbury.

Sybilla is the more obviously appealing of the two lead female characters. Forthright and confident, she is described as having a natural warmth that charms many of the other characters – even including the stern Empress Matilda – and will probably charm most readers as well. She makes good company for her share of the novel. Aline is less obviously attractive, although I have a good deal of sympathy for her. Having lived a sheltered life with her widowed mother in a quiet backwater, it should be no surprise to find that she is completely unprepared when marriage to John pitches her into politics and war.  I can see why the decisive and fearless John Marshal is irritated by Aline’s timidity and passivity – she is the kind of woman who would have been called a ‘drip’ when I was at school – but his disappointment is largely his own fault, since he married Aline for her lands on the grounds that she was the best bargain available to him at the time (I told you he was pragmatic). Poor Aline had no choice in the matter.

The secondary characters are also boldly drawn, even if they make only a brief appearance, from King Stephen as a tired man finding that the crown he grabbed so eagerly is rather more than he can handle, to the thuggish mercenary with a vulgar predilection for purple silk underpants (!), to the kindly Flemish washerwoman and her soldier husband. Pride of place among the secondary characters goes to young William Marshal, who runs away with the novel towards the end. The famous ‘hammers and anvils’ scene at King Stephen’s siege camp at Newbury* is recounted mainly from William’s point of view, and is beautifully done.

An Author’s Note at the end of the book outlines the historical background and there is a list of further reading for those who want to explore further. Maps at the front are useful for following the campaigns for readers who may be unfamiliar with the geography of Wiltshire and Berkshire, where much of the action occurs.

Colourful portrayal of the ambitious and resourceful John Marshal, and his rise to power during the wars between King Stephen and Empress Matilda in turbulent twelfth-century England.

*If you found your way here, you probably know all about that, but if not I won’t spoil the suspense of the novel by describing what happens.

To Defy a King, by Elizabeth Chadwick. Book review

US: Sourcebooks 2011, ISBN 978-1-4022-5089-7, 508 pages.
UK: Sphere 2010, ISBN 978-1847442369, 550 pages.
Uncorrected advance review copy of the US edition kindly supplied by publisher, UK edition sourced independently.

Set in England in 1204-1218 during the turbulent reign of King John, To Defy a King tells the story of Mahelt Marshal, daughter of William Marshal, and her marriage to Hugh Bigod, heir to the Earl of Norfolk. All the main characters are historical figures.

Ten-year-old Mahelt Marshal is the beloved eldest daughter of William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke and the greatest knight in England. Used to doing as she pleases and getting what she wants, Mahelt expects the same when she goes to live with the Bigod family, Earls of Norfolk, as the betrothed bride of eldest son Hugh Bigod. But the Bigods are less indulgent, and Mahelt finds herself having to navigate the tricky transition to adulthood at the same time as adapting to a different set of family values and loyalties. When the tyrannical King John turns against her father, Mahelt’s sense of security is severely undermined, and not even the growing love between her and Hugh can make her forget her fears for the Marshal family. As John becomes ever more cruel and unpredictable, the Bigods find their own loyalty tested to breaking point – and as England lurches towards civil war, Mahelt’s marriage and future happiness may be among the casualties.

Elizabeth Chadwick’s Marshal and Bigod novels are beginning to take on some of the character of a multi-generational family saga. John Marshal’s story was told in A Place Beyond Courage, and his son William Marshal’s in The Greatest Knight and The Scarlet Lion. The Time of Singing (US title: For the King’s Favor) told the story of William Marshal’s colleague Roger Bigod and his wife Ida de Tosney, previously mistress to King Henry II. Now To Defy a King moves to the next generation, and brings the Marshal and Bigod storylines together with the marriage between Mahelt Marshal, daughter of William Marshal, and Hugh Bigod, son of Roger Bigod. Like the other Elizabeth Chadwick novels I have read, the heart of To Defy a King is in the relationships between the characters. Hugh and Mahelt’s romantic relationship forms the core of the story, shaped and influenced by a complex web of familial and other ties. The family relationships between Hugh and his father, between Mahelt and her father and brothers, between Mahelt and her family by marriage and between Hugh and his illegitimate royal half-brother William Longespee (son of Ida de Tosney by Henry II) interact to create a vivid, complex picture of the workings of medieval high society.

Readers with fond memories of Roger Bigod and Ida in the hopeful days of their marriage from The Time of Singing may be saddened to see them in To Defy a King. Gentle Ida has been worn down by constant loneliness and strain and now retreats into the background with her sewing. Mahelt, as vigorous and strong-willed as her great father – but, it has to be said, sadly lacking in his tact – is determined not to fade away as Ida has, but she will face a hard struggle to learn to assert herself without alienating her husband and her new family.

Although the novel covers the events that culminated in the signing of Magna Carta and the eventual French-allied rebellion against King John, most of the political and military events take place off-stage. Like The Time of Singing, To Defy a King focuses on the domestic lives of the characters, particularly Mahelt. Political upheavals in the wider world are experienced mainly through their personal effects, introducing tensions in the characters’ feelings, fortunes and relationships.

King John has long had a reputation as a Bad King, and in To Defy a King he thoroughly deserves it. Here he is not just a tyrant but almost a psychopath, obsessively inflicting hurt and humiliation just because he can, apparently regardless of the destructive consequences, and he is a disgusting sexual predator into the bargain. If this King John has a redeeming quality I missed it; even gentle Ida has difficulty finding excuses for his behaviour.

John’s half-brother William Longespee, the illegitimate son of Ida de Tosney by King Henry II before she married Roger Bigod, is a particularly interesting and complex secondary character. He has an uneasy relationship with his Bigod half-brothers, developing into an outright feud with Hugh at one stage, perhaps rooted in the same sense of insecurity as his love of fine clothes and his obsession with seeking glory on the battlefield. Longespee has it all – and never misses an opportunity to flaunt it – but only on John’s sufferance, and he knows it only too well.

A set of family trees at the front of the book will help readers new to the Marshals and Bigods keep track of the characters and the complex family relationships between them. At the back, an extensive Author’s Note explains the history underlying the novel and the (sometimes scant) historical sources, and there is an interesting interview with the author.

Third generation of Elizabeth Chadwick’s Marshal-Bigod family saga, exploring family and social relationships in medieval England through the marriage between Mahelt Marshal (daughter of William Marshal) and Hugh Bigod (son of Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk).

Lion of Cairo, by Scott Oden. Book review

Transworld, 2010, ISBN 978-0-593-06125-1. 410 pages.

Lion of Cairo is set in and around twelfth-century Cairo. Some of the secondary characters are based on historical figures – I recognised Amalric, King of Jerusalem, and the Syrian general Shirkuh, among others. There may also be other historical figures that I didn’t recognise. The main character, Assad, is fictional.

In Cairo, capital of a decaying empire, the young Caliph Rashid al-Hasan is kept a virtual prisoner in his own palace by his ambitious vizier Jalal. On Egypt’s border, a Syrian army led by a previous scheming vizier and the powerful general Shirkuh is poised to invade. Vizier Jalal is hatching a nefarious plot to ally with the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem against Syria, murder the Caliph, and seize the throne for himself. But he has reckoned without Assad, the greatest assassin of the age and owner of a legendary blade with malevolent supernatural power, who has been sent by the Hidden Master of Alamut to offer help and alliance to the Caliph. As well as the duplicitous Vizier Jalal and the two invading armies, Assad must also deal with a rival sect of assassins and their leader’s loathsome black magic – a task that will stretch even the formidable Emir of the Knife to his limits.

Like Men of Bronze by the same author, which I reviewed a while ago, Lion of Cairo is a blockbuster adventure in the tradition of Robert E Howard, to whom the novel is dedicated. “Action-packed” would be an understatement. Lion of Cairo is overflowing with spies, political intrigues, secret passages, rival sects, murders, assassinations, conspiracies, betrayals, duels and battle, with a helping of necromancy thrown in. It’s also a very dangerous novel to be a character in, as one might expect of a novel with an Assassin as the central character. This is a story in which political backstabbing isn’t a metaphor. The deaths start in the prologue and reach a truly impressive level by the end of the book. Combat scenes are frequent, detailed and graphic; readers who enjoy violent blow-by-blow fight scenes will find Lion of Cairo much to their taste.

The plot is intricately constructed, with several sub-plots that at first appear to be distinct but which cleverly converge to reach a climax at the final battle. The narrative cuts back and forth between sub-plots and different groups of characters, building suspense by always leaving one sub-plot on a cliffhanger when the scene switches to the next. So much is packed into the story that it’s hard to remember that the main events span only a few days.

Although the setting is medieval Cairo in the second half of the twelfth century, and some real historical events and real historical figures are featured, Lion of Cairo has the larger-than-life feel of a tale from the Arabian Nights. Assad’s fearsome knife, called The Hammer of the Infidel, has some evil supernatural power, which Assad himself does not fully understand (although there is a hint that one of the other characters does, and that this may be taken up in the sequel). The leader of the rival assassin sect in Cairo is a necromancer and black magician, who seems to be seeking occult knowledge among the forgotten remains of ancient Egypt.

In the Author’s Note, Scott Oden says “The Cairo presented herein is not the Cairo of history but rather the Cairo of Scheherezade – a city where the fantastic occurs around every corner.” And indeed it does – the city of Cairo is drawn so vividly that it is almost a character in its own right, a teeming metropolis filled with colour, glamour and squalor, where new buildings jostle for space with ruins of unimaginable antiquity, a city filled with the energy of life and with the risk of sudden, violent death. In its variety and vigour it reminds me a little of Terry Pratchett’s Ankh-Morpork, and trust me, that is a compliment.

The ending leaves clear scope for a sequel. There are still plenty of ambitious men with designs on Cairo, and the history of Assad’s mysterious knife is still to be resolved. Not to mention the appearance near the end of a charming and capable young man by the name of Yusuf ibn Ayyub, who (if I have identified him correctly) has an exciting role ahead of him.


Violent, action-packed adventure fantasy full of swords and sorcery, following in the heroic tradition of RE Howard.