Jeff Lake reviewed A bloody field by Shrewsbury by Edith Pargeter
Review of 'A bloody field by Shrewsbury' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
This is a florid, romantic, and Romantic retelling of the story of the Percy rebellion against Henry IV.
It's outside my normal comfort zone in reading, because it focuses as much on exploring the depth of emotion that these (mostly historical) characters inspire in one another as it does on the grim mechanics of politics and war, but I still liked it quite a bit.
I did get a little impatient waiting for the bloodshed, but the interpersonal drama informed the action and made it powerful when it came.
It helps that the writing is so strong. It's not the most engaging style; Pargeter's sentences are complicated and overwordy, and she doesn't stint on them. But the destination is worth the journey, since they convey complex meanings with nuance and precision.
For my taste, the book spends too much time on the pseudo-romance between Hotspur (one of the three principals …
This is a florid, romantic, and Romantic retelling of the story of the Percy rebellion against Henry IV.
It's outside my normal comfort zone in reading, because it focuses as much on exploring the depth of emotion that these (mostly historical) characters inspire in one another as it does on the grim mechanics of politics and war, but I still liked it quite a bit.
I did get a little impatient waiting for the bloodshed, but the interpersonal drama informed the action and made it powerful when it came.
It helps that the writing is so strong. It's not the most engaging style; Pargeter's sentences are complicated and overwordy, and she doesn't stint on them. But the destination is worth the journey, since they convey complex meanings with nuance and precision.
For my taste, the book spends too much time on the pseudo-romance between Hotspur (one of the three principals in the war) and his Welsh ally, since that sort of thing just doesn't turn my gears, but it gives many opportunities for wonderful, transporting descriptions of late medieval Shrewsbury, at a time when old social orders are giving way to new.
This might be the only book I've read with such a positive (though elegiac) view of chivalric social order. Hotspur, the honor-driven knight, is a leftover in a modernizing world. He knows it, too; he knows that the archers that dominate the battlefields have rendered him obsolete. But the book treats him fondly, as something great being lost to time.
For my part, I usually side with the modernists when reading about the ends of eras, but for the time I was reading this I couldn't help feeling for Hotspur too. That's the kind of thing the best historical novels do.
