Customer Reviews

The Spider King

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The Spider King is a wonderful account of the life of Louis XI of France, a very modern king at the end of the feudal age. This organizational genius established the borders of France, and France as a country, basically as we know it today. His intitiatives resulted in a strong central government with participation by the people, the destruction of feudalism, an excellent road system, reliable postal service, and uniform laws. However, his real gift was for intrigue, hence, his nickname, the Spider King. He used a network of spies not only in the upper echelons of governments, but also among the people themselves. By this method, he incited uprisings in the states of rival lords, funded foreign states in wars against his enemies, assassinated pretenders to the crown and won the hearts of his subjects. All this he accomplished in spite of having physical deformities and epilepsy in an age when these were viewed as demonic. Mr. Schoonover's account is historically accurate, but has enough embellishment to make the inhabitants of the 15th century real to the reader.

This is an historical novel about Louis XI, a king of France in the 15th century. It was slow going at first for 2 or 3 chapters where Louis (or the dauphin) is born and grows. From the moment he is defeated by Charles VII-his father, the ineffectual fool surrounded by able ministers and his struggles to reform first his land Dauphiny, and then all of France, I could not put the book down. This gives glimpes into the court lives of the 15th century, and the furious scheming and politics of the time. Louis-ascetic, serious, secretive-does not seem to have been a really likable sort, but you cannot help sympathize with him. This is a wonderful book and not least the fact that you want to find out more about Louis XI proves this.

Schoonover was a popular historical novelist in the 1950s but is largely forgotten today, unfortunately. His first novel, The Burnished Blade, set in France in the mid-15th century, was a bestseller. This one shares the same time and place, more or less, but with an entirely different set of characters -- except for the great financier, Jacques Coeur, who was a major figure in the earlier book, and has only a minor supporting role in this one. The subject is the life of King Louis XI, son of Charles VII (the monarch whom Joan of Arc crowned and otherwise a complete waste of space), one of the first "modern" monarchs, a progenitor of the Renaissance and of Humanism -- though he likely wouldn't have understood either term, really. But he knew the difference between the old, feudal way of ruling and the new, practical way. Louis preferred winning the battle over fighting chivalrously and losing. He was a courageous fighter in his youth, and if he found himself unable to defeat an enemy knight in combat, he would kill the enemy horse, then dispatch the knight on his way to the ground. Machiavelli later thought highly of his methods. The story follows Louis's progress from childhood through early manhood, when his father learned not to trust him (he was far more intelligent than his old man, who was made uncomfortable by the fact) and forced him into internal exile in the Dauphiné. Louis reformed the province, made it run efficiently, gave the people a certain amount of self-government, revolutionized its economy and its military (he was in love with the new technology of artillery), and made both admiring friends and deadly enemies. His father finally attacked the Dauphiné and Louis had to flee to his uncle, Duke Philip "the Good" of Burgundy -- one of the most glittering courts of the age. Philip's son, however, Charles "the Bold," became a lifelong enemy of France and that enmity took up a large portion of Louis's life. But Louis won it all in the long run, pushing his country's borders out to their present extent, centralizing the government, breaking the power of the great aristocrats, and (though he was a thorough autocrat) laying the groundwork for government by the people. Most of the historical interpretation is reasonable, though the author naturally dramatizes events that might not have been so eye-catching in real life. Nearly all the players, too, are real people, with the notable exception of Henri Le Clerq, Louis's chief of artillery, whose bastardy adds a thread of intrigue to the story. The narrative style is very much that of a storyteller and even if you already know, in a general way, what's going to happen, you won't want to put it down until you -- and Louis -- both reach the end.

this is another excellent book by lawerence schoonover. i did not want to put the book down after i started it. anyone who enjoys historical novals will really enjoy this.

An excellent book in Schoonover's list of historical fiction titles. If you are a fan of Maurice Druon, read this.

The Spider King is one of those exceptions to the rule. I gave up on it after only 45 pages of about 300. It's a "biographical novel" of Louis XI but I didn't manage to stick with the book long enough to actually learn anything new about Louis XI.

I knew I was in trouble when I reached chapter two. It was nothing more than an incredibly flowery list of Louis's ancestors, visiting as ghosts as the prince is being born. It was a ham fisted way of introducing a character and the concept of the "divine right of kings."

From there the book went on some sort of long winded tangent involving the war with England, various nobles and a child's birth keep secret from his own mother. It didn't help that the book kept throwing characters into the story without any sort of introduction; a dramatis personae or a family tree would have been useful. So after a week of having managed to read all sorts of other books rather than this "biographical novel" I decided to set it aside.