Customer Reviews

Heretic

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The concluding part of Cornwell's trilogy, Heretic, promised to provide a fabulously roaring end to the tale of Thomas Hookton, English Archer during the early years of the Hundred Years War. But, unfortunately, it went out with a tired whimper rather than the exciting bangs of the previous two novels.
It opens with Thomas' rescue of the overly adventurous Earl of Northampton at a skirmish at Calais and his subsequent orders to go to Astarac and locate the Grail, ensuring his cousin, Guy de Vexille, is aware of his presence.
So, Thomas takes his new band of archers south and captures the Castillon D'Arbizon in a nighttime raid and manages to avert the superstitious and fear induced heretical burning of the Church-condemned beghard, Genevieve, who is, luckily for Thomas, also very beautiful (inducing a fit of jealousy in the ever present Robbie). Meanwhile, the evil Dominician is back, this time in the guise of Louis Bessieres, Cardinal Archbishop of Livorno, with his brother, Charles and they are seeking, in a tower at Soissons, to create an artificial Grail. This they achieve and Thomas and Genevieve are evicted from D'Arbizon by a group of his own men, led by Robbie who's unrequited lust for Genevieve allows his religious fervour to flourish. Thomas is subsequently excommunicated, takes up with a band of corredors led by Phildin, and spends much of the time moving through the Berat countryside before returning to D'Arbizon.
Meanwhile, the Count of Berat is murderd by his nephew, Joscelyn, who turns out to be another Jekyll. Joscelyn promptly takes his cannon to D'Arbizon, aided by Charles Bessiers and Guy Vexille to both remove the English garrison under Sir Guillaume and capture the grail. As Thomas reenters D'Arbizon, killing Bessiere's on the way, they discover the false grail and destroy it before most of the protagnists die either from the ensuing battles or the Plague which has arrived in France. We also finally get to see Thomas, archer, in a final duel with his cousin, Guy, swordsman, with the inevitable result. At the end Thomas and his Genevieve ride into the English sunset, with Robbie reconciled to them and they locate the true Grail.
All in all, a good final part to the trilogy with the exception that Cornwell has taken the safe option that most modern Grail stories follow. In true Indiana Jones style, the baddies fall for the fabulously wealthy cup whilst the hero realises that it the Grail is liable to be a simply crafted vessel and then it ends up being removed for all time so that evil men can't kill more for it. A tad cliched and hence the earlier statement that it ends with a whimper.
Nevertheless, Harlequin and Vagabond provide an excellent foray into the Hundred Years War and Thomas of Hookton is a character well worth following and if Cornwell were to write more of him I'd eagerly wait for it to hit the shelves.

Bernard Cornwell's Grail Quest trilogy concludes with "Heretic," and a bloody conclusion it is, too.

Thomas of Hookton lives in violent times. In "The Archer's Tale," Thomas's father was butchered by Thomas's cousin, Guy Vexille, and Thomas's woman, Eleanor, was also murdered by Guy in "Vagabond." Thomas has survived several vicious battles and an even more vicious round of torture at the hands of a Dominican priest. And through it all, Thomas has sought the holiest of holy relics, the Grail . . . although Thomas has not always pursued his quest with vigor.

Now, in "Heretic," Thomas at last closes in on the object of his quest by returning to his ancestral home of Astarac. By pursuing the Grail here, Thomas also hopes to draw out his cousin so Thomas can avenge his father and Eleanor.

Cornwell, as usual, keeps Thomas the Archer occupied, wielding a new, mightier bow with the same lethal efficiency. For those who have not yet read this series, the archer was not the little guy standing in the rear picking off foes with little pinpricks. The archer was king of the battlefield, using a variety of arrows to slaughter men and horses, perforating even the strongest armor with cannon-like shots. The arrival of primitive cannon technology in this series does not alter the balance of power.

Thomas, being Thomas, gets sidetracked with romance by falling in love with a beautiful woman (who always seem to turn up for Thomas . . . oh, well -- it pays not to overthink such things). This woman was falsely accused of being a heretic and has been tortured at the hands of an evil priest, much like Thomas. For his chivalry, Thomas is excommunicated. Cast out, he nevertheless pursues his twin goals of revenge and salvation.

Cornwell vividly describes the world of the Hundred Years War. Not only does Thomas have to contend with dastardly kin and mighty men-at-arms, the Black Death is screaming across the land, with horrifying results. Cornwell describes it all with his usual straightforward yet captivating style.

"Heretic" is not a great departure from the earlier two novels in the series. Sharp-eyed readers will have spotted clues in earlier books regarding the Grail and its location, but the mystery is still captivating, and the conclusion is unexpected.

While not exactly a "feel good" book, the Grail Quest series is a fun read, and a rollicking ride across the battlefields of Britain and France. Check it out!

First, the positive: this book vividly portrays the superstition and gross spiritual darkness of people living in the 14th Century, and it does so better than anything I've ever read or seen. We see an innocent young girl condemned to be burned at the stake, after having been tortured by a sadistic Dominican monk. Our hero, Thomas of Hookton, rescues her from that fate, but soon his command is falling apart because the men are terrified to have a condemned heretic among them, thinking it is bad luck. Thomas cleverly calms their fears by touching a crucifix to the girl's forehead and showing that she is not burned or struck dead. Nevertheless, later on, after the girl has killed her Dominican torturer, and Thomas is excommunicated for harboring her and keeping the church from burning her, the problem arises again, with a vengeance. That much of the book (about the first half) was gripping reading. After that, the novel just kind of fell apart and lost all its direction.

Now the negative: There are major continuity problems between the second and third books of this "trilogy." Jeanette, "the blackbird," who was Thomas' love interest in the first two books, simply disappears and is never heard from or even mentioned in the third book. That was a major disappointment, because she was an interesting character who had been developed over the first two novels, and it seemed that she and Thomas were destined to be together. In the second book, "Vagabond," Sir Guillaume D'Evecque lost his estates but, in the battle of LeRoche-Derrien depicted at the end of "Vagabond", D'Evecque had captured his own landlord, the wealthy Count of Coutances, and was in a position to extract a large ransom and get his estates returned to him. His exact words were that Coutances' "wife and daughters will have to whore themselves to raise his ransom!" But at the beginning of "Heretic" there is no mention of this at all, and Guillaume is depicted as landless and only able to retain two men-at-arms. But by far the worst offense in this regard was Robbie Douglas, who turns out to have half a dozen severe character defects in "Heretic" that weren't even hinted at in "Vagabond." For example, he suddenly has a gambling problem, and loses his own ransom money not once but twice! His character is all over the map, doing crazy things that don't make any sense and have no consistent motivation. It is as if Cornwell hired someone else to write the final book of the trilogy, and that person read the cliff-notes of the first two books, and not the books themselves.

Another problem with this book, and a major reason why it is much weaker than the first two, is that there is no real history here after the first 26 pages. In the first two books, Cornwell skillfully wove his story around major engagements of the 100 years war, and very accurately depicted those engagments. This is just pure novel, with no redeeming history lesson about actual battles (although, as described above, it is probably an excellent depiction of the gross spiritual darkness prevailing at that time).

By the end of this volume, I found myself having a great deal of sympathy for the arch-villain, Guy Vexille, Thomas' cousin, and the man who killed both his father and his pregnant first wife. He's the only character in this mess who knows exactly what he is doing (trying to find the grail), is doing it for noble reasons (he genuinely believes it will make the world a better place), and is single-minded in his pursuit of his noble goal. Everyone else just wants to kill, plunder and rape, including Thomas, who just wants to sleep with pretty girls and kill people with his bow. Yet Thomas is the hero and Vexille the villain of this trilogy! Wow. What a disappointing end to this trilogy. Out with a whimper, indeed.

The Holy Grail was the most sacred of all treasures in medieval times, sending armies on quests for the fabled cup all over Europe. Thomas of Hookton, a young English archer of some considerable skill, finds himself in France searching for the grail, but instead finds himself a bundle of trouble.

Thomas saves a girl from being burned at the stake for witchcraft and suddenly finds himself excommunicated from the church, and an enemy of his friends. To make matters worse, English archers in France were popular amongst bandits- because of the high price on their heads. Thomas and his newfound love soon find shelter in a monastery, which holds further clues to the whereabouts of the mythical grail.

The monastery proves to be an unsafe hideout, as Thomas' ambitious and ruthless cousin also seeks the grail, and would quite like to see Thomas and his heretic girlfriend dead. Things come to a head when Thomas is reunited with his former friends, but ends up besieged in a castle. While the English longbow was the most deadly infantry weapon of the era, it was no match for the early cannon, subtly named Hell Spitter, dragged in from Italy to knock down the castle. The Italian gunners however bring something far more deadly with them in the form of the Black Death.

Bernard Cornwell brings to life a number of aspects of the medieval age, like the deep reaching influence of the church, and how allegiances among soldiers were made and broken. He also offers a view into the harsh realities of medieval life, like the desperate poverty of peasants, who were an easy target for both soldiers and bandits alike. Cornwell pulls no punches when it comes to graphic descriptions of violence and war, and how something as simple as a broken limb could prove fatal.

While Robin Hood may have been noble enough to steal from the rich and give to the poor, Thomas of Hookton stole from the poor when he had to, and killed the rich when they deserved it. This is a fast moving and historically accurate story with characters flawed enough to be real people, tangled in one of the most futile but enduring treasure hunts of all time.

HERETIC is a tale of adventure, romantic notions, warriors in battle for truths they hold dear, and the search for the elusive Holy Grail of Christendom in the fourteenth century A.D. Bernard Cornwell, the author of numerous historical chronicles, extends his stories from THE ARCHER'S TALE and VAGABOND to a further quest for the Grail in HERETIC. Thomas of Hookton, the bastard son of a noble family, is the archer who leads the Earl of Northampton's archers to the shores of France.

Thomas distinguishes himself in battle for his lord and is given a new challenge. He is to take a small force deep into southern French territory, capture a fortress, defend it and hope to capture his evil cousin, Guy de Vexille. He seeks Astarac in the county of Berat to explore and find the Grail for Northampton. The ransomed Scot leader, Robbie Douglas and Sir Guillaume, an English nobleman, accompany Thomas to France.

Thomas's father was a priest who had kept secret the location of the Grail, if it had existed. The clue to its whereabouts lay in the Latin words he had inscribed on papers left behind before his murder. Thomas doubted its existence. His father had rambled and been considered a lunatic.

The journey becomes complicated when the archers conquer Castillion D'Arbizon and become involved in local politics. To administer justice in the enclave, the conquerors must carry out orders from the Church's governing bishops. A heretic, a young vagabond girl, has been judged and sentenced to death by fire. Thomas, as civil authority, hears the facts and decides that she should live. Local priests disagree with his judgment and excommunicate him from the Church.

Cornwell's vivid imagery of the time and setting in HERETIC places the reader directly in the action. Each pull of the powerful bowstring follows with an adrenaline rush inherent with victory. His description of the warmongering mechanisms are graphic pictures of their times. The book is fiction based on general facts, but is a believable panoramic view of real events.

Priests ruled their local abbeys with ironclad domination and were not to be disobeyed. HERETIC shows the majority as self-serving and mean-spirited. Father Planchard is an exception --- he befriends Thomas. Planchard produces a wooden box, inscribed with the Latin words Thomas's father had ingrained in him, "Calix meus inebrians." The interchange between him and Planchard is coy wordplay at its best.

The accused heretic, Genevieve, is the pivotal figure in the story. Thomas discovers through her that his quest for revenge and reinstatement in the Church he knows diminishes in importance. He learns that peace can be found without the discovery of the Grail. One hopes that future books will expand this fascinating Grail Quest series. HERETIC defines the men of the era and thirsts for more.

--- Reviewed by Judy Gigstad

Bernard Cornwell is a great writer of historical fiction, particularly when it involves armed conflict at the personal level. Indeed, some of his works send readers running to the dictionary to look up obscure terms for armor, arms and tactics. Some may find that tedious but I find it fascinating. This book is no different in that respect. It is also a good story.

The action takes place in France during the Hundred Years War. The protagonist is an English archer charged with leading a group of men to take over a small town that was one the possession of an English noble. The real reason is that the noble suspects that there will be found information leading to the recovery of the Holy Grail. It seems that many others have the same idea and the situation is ready for medieval conflict: bloody, brutal and harsh.

One of the things that makes this an interesting book is the characterizations. Often, the "good guys" are found doing bad things for bad reasons. The "bad guys" occasionally have very laudable reasons for their actions. Things don't seem so simple when viewed through a medieval lens.

The title refers to the love interest of the protagonist. She is a girl falsely accused of heresy and condemned to burn. Instead of burning herself, she is rescued and inflames the libidos of various characters thus causing even more chaos and conflict. That much at least has not chanced since the Hundred Years War.

It is a good story and Cornwell does a good job of making the reader feel at home in times long past.

Let me preface this by saying that Bernard Cornwell is probably my favorite living author. I am a huge fan of the Sharpe series, his Warlords trilogy, and his new Viking/Alfred the Great series promises to be his best yet. However, his trilogy about Thomas of Hookton and his adventures in the Grail Quest series have left me unsatisfied. This series started out well enough with the Archer's Tale, which was a riveting account of the English armies in France during the Hundred Years war. Cornwell's usual incredible attention to detail transported the reader back in time (like he always does) and really explains to you why things happened in the historical context. In this case, why the longbow was king of the battlefield. Thomas was your typical Cornwell hero, young and inexperienced but quickly a veteran in the arts of war. He was surrounded by the usual cast of battle hardened but friendly (to Thomas) veterans along with the usual well born foes looking to foil our heroes dreams. Hey, its a formula that works and I have no problem with Cornwell recycling this in different historical eras. He even added a very interesting female character in Jeannette and Thomas was caught up in the events leading up to the Battle of Crecy. Great stuff.

The second book, Vagabond, continued a good story, but started to really delve into the quest for the Grail and the historical events in France, while still relevant, were starting to take a back seat to the Grail quest. My biggest problem with this book is that Thomas would have been crippled for life following a certain episode (an episode I really hope Cornwell doesn't start using on his protagonists - we have George Martin for that). So for me, the book starts to take on a bit of a unrealistic format.

Finally, we come to the final book Heretic, and in my opinion Cornwell loses control of the story. First, he almost completely ignores history. This is more or less a fantasy novel set in France about the Grail. England and France reach a truce, and Thomas' liege the Earl of Northhampton sends him on an improbable task to take a castle in southern France and look for the Holy Grail. Ummm...OK. A shaky start, but the story is engaging as Thomas has his first command and we have a great scene where a castle is stormed and several good episodes of raiding. Then Geneiveve comes in and the story falls apart. She's a heretic condemend by the church and set to burn. She falls into the hands of Thomas and he defies the church and won't burn her, eventually getting excommunicated and losing all his men in the process. Cornwell has never written women well so I give some leeway on his female characters. However this is just sloppy. Someone else pointed this out but it bears further mentioning, I don't think Geneiveve has more than 100 words of dialog in the book. Who is she and why would Thomas throw away his soul and the duty to his liege lord (something conviently overlooked in his decision process) for this girl? All we know is she is anorexic thin and beautiful. Empoverished girls who bathed maybe one a month in the 14th century were not beautiful and its surprising that someone normally so attuned to period detail just lets this pass.

After Part One, the book moves in one confusing circle around the land of Astarac, the historical home of Thomas' ancestors and his cousin Guy Vexille, who I wish would have had a bigger role because he was actually the only interesting character in this book. Instead, we get chapter after chapter about a stereotypical and boring French Knight Joscelyn who we never for a moment suspect is a match for our hero. Vexille meanwhile is consumed by a religious quest and a warrior monk mentality that makes him dangerous (and ruthless). In the meantime, one of Thomas' best friends from the series goes completely insane and illogically turns against him and everyone he's fought with for the last several years. The conclusion isn't bad but it doesn't make up for the several hundred pages of aimless wandering it took to get there.

Lots of good history of course, as always. In particular I like how God and the belief in God is portrayed in the 14th century, even among vicious killers. But Geneiveve has to be one of Cornwell's worst main characters and Thomas slips several notches down the list of Cornwell heroes by the time this book is over. I can see myself rereading book one again, but I'll pass on the 2nd two books in this trilogy. Maybe Cornwell should pick up the war in the 15th century and try again.

Heretic is the final installment of Cornwell's Grail Quest series that started with The Archer's Tale and continued with Vagabond. In Heretic Thomas continues his quest for the Holy Grail and his cousin the Harlequin. This time Thomas and his band head south to Gascony as the tale takes him back to his ancestral lands of Astarac searching for answers to the Grail mystery and for Guy Vexille. In this stunning conclusion to Thomas of Hookton's tale Cornwell does a magnificent job of tying up all the loose ends of the story for a very satisfying conclusion to the tale. The best book of the Grail Quest series, Heretic is a must read for any fan of Thomas.

This is actually my first Bernard Cornwell novel. It is amazingly, and sometimes gruesome, detailed. His thorough research on historical issues are indeed extremely well. That is why, after finishing reading this novel, I became one of Cornwell's huge fan.

Heretic is actually the last novel of the Grail Quest series, with a total of three installments. I have never actually read the first two installments, which did not make a big differrence, since parts of the previous plots were being told sporadically in Heretic.

Thomas Hookton, the main protagonist, met a heretic girl who is bound for burning for being claimed heretic. The story revolves around Thomas' search for the holy grail, the cup, to be more precise. His adventures with the other competing knight, being a paid mercenary for several kings, his love interests, etc. All of these interesting stories were woven into a nice fictional novel.

The outcome of this book is astonishing. If I wrote the ending in this review, it will shatter the element of excitement prepared by Bernard Cornwell.

Get this book, a five-star read.

This was a great read either as the third in a series or as a stand alone.Heretic", the last book in the 3-book medieval Grail Quest series, is where Thomas Hookton finally confronts his cousin, Guy Vexille. Thomas, with his war-band, travels to Astarac, the former home of his infamous family, The Vexilles. Thomas then finds a lover, Genevieve, while at his stay in Astarac. She was a heretic and persecuted by the Church, and was going to be burned, but Thomas saves her. Subsequently, Thomas is also condemned by the Church during a siege in Astarac. He and Genevieve flee from Astarac, and take refuge with the bandits in the hills. Guy Vexille then hunts them down, but is unsuccessful in capturing them.