The Candlemass Road [Paperback]

George MacDonald Fraser (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1998

This is a beautiful, moving tale from the bestselling author of the "Flashman Papers". To the young Lady Margaret Dacre, raised in the rich security of Queen Elizabeth's court, the Scottish border was a land of blood and brutal violence, where raid and murder were commonplace, and her broad inheritance lay at the mercy of the outlaw riders and feuding tribes of England's last frontier. Beyond the law's protection, alone but for her house servants and an elderly priest, she could wait helpless in her lonely manor, or somehow find the means to fight the terror approaching from the northern night!

Editorial Reviews

Review

'The Candlemass Road' is a simple tale, beautifully told; and very moving withal! It's an afternoon's reading that'll stick in the memory for long afterwards. Hooray for George Macdonald Fraser!' SPECTATOR 'It's George MacDonald Fraser is top form on the Borders, juggling lairds and outlaws in bitter battling over disputed territory.' MAIL ON SUNDAY, 'Books of the Year' 'A bravura performance! fine, taut, sinewy! Meat never came redder.' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'George MacDonald Fraser is such a good storyteller! we get bowled along in the twists and scrapes of the action.' GLASGOW HERALD

From the Publisher

Having written the definitive history of the Anglo-Scottish "Border Reivers" in The Steel Bonnets, Fraser here gives us a robust fiction based firmly on Border fact. Lady Margaret Dacre leaves behind an aristocratic life in London to take control of lands formerly governed by one of the few good men, lately murdered, who has tried to live in the midst of the Reivers' lawlessness. What possible chance does she have in this "neglected and cursed" region? You'd be surprised, as it turns out... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 182 pages
• Publisher: Trafalgar Square Publishing (February 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0006477208
• ISBN-13: 978-0006477204
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,645,064 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Candlemass Road - Fraser's best, March 8, 2000

By 

j. ballard (Columbia, Maryland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Candlemass Road (Paperback)

This is both a review of The Candlemass Road and a sharp disagreement with the previous reviewer. I have read all of Mr. Fraser's books, (save only Quartered Safe Out Here), and count Mr. Fraser as one of my favorite writers. He is a master storyteller, who grabs readers and pulls them along, with breakneck action alternating with insightful looks into humankind - often in the same sentence. And, of course, Mr. Fraser is funny. The Pyrates may be one of the laugh-out-loud, funniest books ever written.

The Candlemass Road is by far George MacDonald Fraser's most powerful book. In a few short pages, Mr. Fraser sets the premise, the scene and the characters. While loaded with tense action sequences,this is primarily a study of character and of situational ethics. It is a study of a uncertain land in an uncertain time, told through the eyes of an aged, flock-less priest. The story is based on the horrors faced on a daily basis by the inhabitants of the Borderlands between Scotland and England at the end of the sixteenth century - the history of which was ably explored in Mr. Fraser's The Steel Bonnets. (If you enjoyed that book, you'll love this one.)

The protagonist, young Lady Margaret Dacre, must use all of her wit and power to protect her folk from a band of Scots reivers - on the very day she returns to her ancestral seat after seventeen years at Court. Lady Margaret uses the tools available, and learns a valuable lesson about life on the borders, and the "custom of the country".

The previous reviewer felt that the story ended just when it was getting going. I could not disagree more strongly. The book ended because the story ended. One paragraph more would have been too much. The reader does not need to be told what happens next.

The characters are fully developed; the action is intense; the interplay between the main characters is electric. This book grabbed me on page one, and left me shaking at the last word. This is a fabulous book. Buy it so Mr. Fraser will write more. Then read it. Then read it again. Five stars.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a great short novel, April 9, 2000

By 

Steven Osburn "steveo12251" (Las Vegas, Nv United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Candlemass Road (Paperback)

After reading QUARTERED SAFE OUT HERE, the best personal world war two recollection I have ever read about the British campaign against the Japanese, I was extremely interested in learning more of the history of the people he led, the Borderers. (The Engish charged and the Germans ran. The Germans charged and the English ran. The Kings Own Borderers charged and everybody ran.) I then read STEEL BONNETS, Fraser's history of the people he had led in that war. It was fascinating. I wondered why he didn't write one of his great stories based on what he had researched. Then I found out about CANDLEMASS ROAD. I ordered it and awaited it with great anticipation. When it arrived, I went through it in an afternoon. I have rarely been so disappointed by a favorite author. I want the publisher to slap Fraser on both cheeks and tell him to " march right back into that room and finish the book". What was written is better than anything Fraser has ever written I know, from my reading, that Fraser admires CAPTAIN BLOOD as a great adventure novel. I agree with him. The story he wrote here is as good as anything written by Sabatini and it left me with a feeling of great dismay when it ended before its time. What he sets up here is one of the great hisorical novels.

But it ends up feeling like what could have been an appendage (here's what I think it might have been like) to STEEL BONNETS. If you are a Fraser fan, order it and enjoy. If you are a Border fan, order it and enjoy. If you are an historical novel by a reliable author fan, write to the publisher and demand that the author be required to to tell us the end of the story of Lady Dacre, the Broken man, Wattie and the Bailiff. The use of the English language is some of the best I have ever encountered ( I am an O'Brian fan) and the rendering of the Scottish the most accessible since Farnol.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fraser in Top Form, November 25, 2002

By 

Paul McGrath (Sacramento, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Candlemass Road (Paperback)

There really is no feeling like that of picking up an as-yet-unread novel by George MacDonald Fraser. It is one of delicious certainty: you will be entertained, you will be informed, and you will be charmed. Unfortunately I can only expect to have this experience a couple of more times in my life, as there just isn't that much left of his that I haven't read anymore. Alas, alas, alas.

The locale in this one is the wild English/Scottish borderlands in 1598. Although England was mostly settled and Scotland was mostly settled, the midlands--under the jurisdiction of neither--were not, and bands of thieves and brigands--reivers--roamed about, terrorizing the countryside.

For characters there is Luis Guevara, the teller of the tale and the meek priest of the Dacre estate, located in the middle of these badlands; there is Lord Ralph Dacre, the white-haired, crimson-clad Red Bull, Lord of the Estate, and scourge of the thieves; there is Lady Margaret Dacre, sharp-witted, fire-breathing, and newly come to the estate after the untimely death of her father; and there is finally Archie Noble Waitabout, a broken man, thief, and he who proved to be the Great Lady's protector.

For plot there is the death of the Red Bull, "shot . . . through with calivers, nine balls in his body, and he let die by the roadside." Lady Margaret, bred in courtly London, comes to the estate and on the date of her arrival finds that the thieves are already attempting to reinstitute their filthy blackmail on her timid villagers. Those charged with helping her find excuses not to, for various reasons, but primarily because of their unstated fear of the dreaded Nixon clan. She turns to the imprisoned Waitabout, who in exchange for his life, agrees to go to the village and defend it.

For language, there is the incomparable GMF, this time using the lingo of an educated Scot of the 16th Century, duplicating the feat of his bravura linguistic performance in Black Ajax. And there is his descriptive power, here, the narrator's first view of the village: "A sorry pack they were, the men-folk stout enough but dirty and ill-clad, the women as slatternly as I ever saw, and if there were three pairs of shoon among them it was enough."

And the description of the battle itself, enough to make your blood run cold: "There was a great commotion about the bearded Nixon, him that was the leader and called Ill Will, and they tugged him all ways, some saying he should hang and others for having at him with their blades . . . they dragged him to the great dunghill that lay beside the cattle pen, and there heaved him up, and drave him down head foremost into the filth, and held him there."

There you have it, another great GMF novel, this one without the romantic playfulness of the Flashman novels, but still with the driving narrative, expert use of the language, and superb research. You cannot go wrong with this author. He has easily reached the stature of his heroes: Stevenson, Doyle, Sabatini, and Dumas. Indeed, he may stand above them.