Customer Reviews

Knight's Fee

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Knight's Fee is one of the four or five books I've read in my life which alway make me cry. Though written for children, it's completely unpatronising, always crediting the reader with intelligence and imagination, and is beautifully written. It tells the story of Randal, a half-Saxon half-Breton lad in Norman England, an orphan left to fend for himself as a dog-boy in Arundel castle, and details his gradual rise to knighthood and freedom, at a terrible price. I have only ever seen this book in hardback, in an Oxford Childrens Library edition, never in paperback, which is a great pity, as it is a vastly underrated book by this author, far better I think than her more well-known stories of Roman Britain, and deserves to be much more widely read.

I think that this, along with The Lantern Bearers, is one of the best books for this age group ever written, and therefore one of the best ever written. The historical context is amazing, but the characters, their relationships, and what happens to and in them is what is wonderful. This book is often rightly suggested as a good one to read when trying to deal with death (along with Charlotte's Web). Sutcliffe has a bone-deep integrity and a clear yet merciful look at reality and suffering. I celebrate this book and am very grateful for it.

I only discovered Rosemary Sutcliff recently, but by the time I'd finished the second book, I was on a quest to find everything I could, and delighted to learn that she wrote more than 50 books. Knight's Fee is the eighth and my favorite to date. (Yes, even more than Eagle of the Ninth, which is waaaayyyy better than the recent movie.) Her settings are vivid, her characters superbly drawn, and her writing exquisite. Sutcliff tells a better story in 250 pages than most authors manage in twice the page count.

Knight's Fee is set in southern England in the 1090s and early 1100s, as the kingdom is settling, still uneasily at points, into Norman rule. The real events and people of the time are skillfully woven throughout the fictional aspects of story. The main character is the orphan son of a minor Saxon lady and a Breton man-at-arms who is left to fend for himself as a dog-boy at the castle where his father had served. At age 10, he is taken into the household of a neighboring Norman knight to be a companion and squire to his grandson and sole surviving descendant. The reader watches him grow up and become entwined into the lives and lot of his foster brother and father. Ultimately, he becomes a knight, although at a terrible price. The ending is powerful enough, and so bittersweet, that it left me with a lump in my throat and a reluctance to pick up another book because it will be a disappointment after this one.

I love Sutcliff, and I get all of her I can. This one definitely wasn't the best I've ever read. It was mostly a long, long tale with the real plot thrown in in pieces. It was a feud, and it ended a bit sour for our hero, so that part wasn't even encouraging. Her fine characters and delicate descriptions are as good as ever...but the plot could have used a little more work.