38 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A powerful character-driven story and why you should read it, October 15, 2008
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A lot has been made of this book being a re-telling of The Canterbury Tales. It isn't. There are some superficial similarities, but that is all. This is however a very wonderful character-driven book and I enjoyed it thoroughly, much more so than I ever did Chaucer. This book follows a group of people as they slowly accrete around the narrator, the "Camelot" who is an itinerant peddler of bogus religous artifacts. The time is 1348 and the Black Death has made its way to England's shores. The Camelot decides to make his way north and inland to try and get as far away as possible from the Southern ports where the plague first appears.
Along the way the Camelot picks up a rag-tag bunch of company; a misanthropic magician with his malformed fetus display, to a master and apprentice musician, an eerie young fortune-teller, a healer, a story-teller, and an artisan and his wife. The plague dogs their heels as the group face incessant rain, privation and starvation as they try, in wretched circumstances, to stay beyond the curtain of death sweeping England. The book powerfully conveys what England was like at this time, the prejudices, the fears, the strange beliefs, the greediness of the priests, the squalor, the filth and the terror and horror of the Black Death.
Despite this grim backdrop, the tale is powerfully compelling as the story focuses not upon these grim external conditions, but upon the goodness and hopes of the characters themselves. None of the characters are quite who they claim to be and all have secrets they desperately wish to keep. Over the months they travel together, eat and sleep together, face misfortune and disaster together they learn more about their companions until all the secrets are fully revealed in turn, often with dire consequences. What makes this book so powerful is the beautifully rendered characters. They are exquisitely drawn, full of humanity and the range of human hopes and fears, and you will feel compassion and empathy for them as the story unfolds. This book is well worth the reading and will stick with you for long after you've closed the pages.
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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
better first two-thirds than final third, November 16, 2008
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Company of Liars is, for most of the book's roughly 500 pages an engrossing, entertaining, and even educational read. A historical novel combining a Canterbury-Tales like structure (it's slight and shallow but there) and a medieval-mystery like plot, it entertains while the motley group of Chauceresque pilgrims gather by ones and twos into a single group (some more willingly than others), it educates while this group troops through the muck and death of 14th century plague-ridden England, and it engrosses while its members are knocked off one by one. Unfortunately, while it still garners a recommend, it doesn't sustain any of these three aspects through the whole of the book.
It's narrated by Camelot (or "a" camelot since the name is also a general descriptor of those who sell holy relics), whose voice is pleasant and endearing enough to happily carry us through the novel, though at times it felt like the voice wasn't wholly of the 14th century. Camelot introduces himself and his profession, then the arrival of the plague, which is the impetus for Camelot's decision to head north and inland in order to find a place to escape the plague until the oncoming winter kills it off (ahh, the optimism). Soon enough Camelot is successively joined by a pair of musicians--a master and apprentice--, a deformed storyteller, a traveling conjuror, a pregnant woman and her lover, a healer, and a strange 12-year-old girl who reads the runes and tells the future.
The travelers are all trying to escape the plague but they have other reasons for flight as well, reasons that will remain their own for some time. Meanwhile, not all are happy about their forced accompaniment and there is a lot of tension, strive, and even violence between the various members of the band. It doesn't help that at least one is a fugitive or that they are seemingly being stalked by a lone wolf that howls outside their camp almost nightly no matter how long or how far they travel.
The book maintains a good sense of tension as the characters come together and as they trudge through the countryside trying to outrace the certain death that follows. Time and again they seem to find a potential shelter only to be forced onward again. The tension heightens as their personal quarrels start flaring into violence, the wolf continues to stalk them, and the plague starts to hem them in at all sides and it reaches its apex with the first death among them. The historical background is well-done throughout, conveying the sense of fear and superstition. And the stories that each tells along the way (in another nod to Chaucer) are interesting enough fabulist tales, if not particularly original.
Problems start to arise about two-thirds of the way in though. One is that the constant bickering among them starts to get a bit wearing. Another is that the lies/secrets that each is carrying aren't particularly surprising by the time they're revealed. If anything, the revelations are a bit anti-climactic. The same is true about several of the killings. And the big finale has several problems of its own, which I won't go into for fear of spoiling it.
One can't help but be disappointed by the payoff, which always makes for a hard call on a recommendation. The first two-thirds I'd say are a solid if not inspiring 4, but the final third is a disappointing 2. In the end, I come down on recommending Company because I can't say I'm sorry I read it, though it disappoints in the end. Though perhaps that's appropriate that in a book that follows a group of travelers, the best part is that segment of the journey where the road is still open and mysterious. Recommended with qualifiers.
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Surprisingly Really Good, January 3, 2009
I was fully prepared not to like this book given my distaste for marketing tricks like the one used by the publishing house to compare Company of Liars to Chaucer's CT. So imagine my surprise when I read the first page, then the second, then third, and didn't stop reading until I had finished the novel in two sittings. If you want to know what life was like in the fourteenth century, you'd do well to read this book. It requires its fair share of suspending disbelief, given that one of the protagonists reads runes and makes accurate predictions throughout the novel, but aside from that this is the real thing. I felt like I was joining the characters on their daily struggle to find adequate food and shelter. And when members of the party die, I really felt for them, which to me is the sign of a great book. Five very solid stars.
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