England, the early eleventh
century. Godwin Wulfnothson inherits his father’s title and grows close in
allegiance to King Ethelred’s son, Edward. The two work together in supporting
the ailing king and in raising armies to defend England against the invading
Danes. Throughout this, Godwin is harried by a deceitful noble, Eadric; the two
are locked in a dynastic feud.
Shieldwall, the first
in a cycle of novels telling the story behind and up to the 1066 Battle of
Hastings, tells a straightforward story, that of the rise of a decent warrior,
trusted by royalty and beset by a scheming nobleman nominally on the same side
of a wider conflict. To some extent, that’s the archetype Bernard Cornwell has
been working through several whole series of books. That said, when it’s done
well, it’s great. And for the most part, Shieldwall
delivers.
A sense of history is achieved
through use of archaic place-names, while modernising pretty much everything
else; the position takes a little time to adjust to, though it proves
effective. Though there’s plenty of action, there’s greater emphasis on the
political machinations and infighting between clans, and on the variable value
of personal oaths and allegiances.
The pace is deliberate, even
slow in places, and at times variable; we get a real feeling for the passing of
seasons, and what it means to be both on campaign and left at home, wondering
and fearing the worst. As the narrative opens up from personal journey to
countrywide political military drama we perhaps inevitably lose the focus on
protagonist Godwin, though we gain in scope.
A serious book (it’s not an
unabashed action piece), Shieldwall
is very well written in places, some sections giving insight (I’d never come
across the idea of the timing of Lent being a virtue being made of a necessity
at the end of the winter used in fiction before), and in starting sixty years
before the Norman Conquest, provoking us to consider the contexts of a pivotal
moment in English history that’s not often seen in terms of being part of a
continuum.
Hill, Justin. 2012. Shieldwall (London: Abacus), 497 pages,
978-0349123370
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