Bullington's third medieval historical fiction lacks the supernatural element that was present to some degree in his debut novel (having not read it I cannot speak for his second offering), although the author would have had the chance had he opted to reveal how the 'Lazarus effect' was achieved - to give away more than this would be a spoiler.
Most of the gritty, morbidly humorous story of betrayal, identity theft and revenge takes place in the island town of Dordrecht (Rhine-Meuse delta in the Low Countries), in the wake of the havoc wreaked by the St. Elizabeth flood of 1421, where the intrigues plaguing the hostile factions of Hooks and Cods, which culminated in the historical battle at Brouwershaven in January 1426 (vaguely referenced on pp. 331-42), serve as a background.
True to form, the writer paints flesh and blood characters with dubious motivations and questionable deeds, the chief of which is the odd trio of a male couple consisting of the noble-born, manipulative Jan Tieselen and his paranoid, thugish lover Sander Himbrecht of humble origin, and an unbridled lass named Jolanda, who was purchased from her wretched purple dye-maker father on account of her swimming/diving skills to function as a "submarine draft animal" (p. 209) in retrieving a precious ring - the only one I could occasionally empathize with. As much as context allows, those in the secondary cast are also well fleshed out, including a brief appearance from none other than the infamous Gilles de Rais (pp. 280-90) before he went bonkers.
A major gripe of mine, however, is that the larger, middle bulk of the plot could not hold my attention as intensely as did the first part (up to p. 173), which ends with the expedition into Oudeland meer, and the last hundred or so vividly depicted, action-packed pages (jailbreak and all) - maybe that's why it took me over a week to finish the book. While certainly entertaining at times, at the end of the day I could not really put my finger on the moral of the story, if any.
Despite the heavy dosage of vulgar expressions and swearing, and to the author's credit, Bullington yet again demonstrates he has a way with words and is able to string strangely rhythmic sentence structures. In addition, I find his use of quasi-proverbial similes (?) particularly expressive: i.e., "fast as good luck slipping through your fingers" p. 399, "[a]n idea took hold like a polecat on a rat" p. 473, "[r]elief warmed him like a pair of freshly pissed pants on a cold night in an alley" p. 476. Last but not least, he's the kind of writer who does not shun spending endless days in the library so as to be able to evoke the minutest details and genuine atmosphere of the Middle Ages (see bibliography pp. 496-9).
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Shaun
Bullington drifts toward the mainstream ...
Reviewed in Canada on June 2, 2013Maria 55
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