The third of Cadnum’s 12th-century dramas takes battle weary, returned Crusader Edmund and three companions from the England of Prince John back to Rome, escorting comely young Ester de Laci, an attendant of Eleanor of Aquitaine’s, on a pilgrimage. Once again, it’s the violence woven into medieval society that sounds the loudest thematic chord. Sandwiched between brutal opening and closing duels (“ ‘Our English lad chopped the Frankish knight down like a stump!’ ” genially comments an onlooking scholar after the first fracas), the pilgrims twice battle bands of pursuers sent by John. Then, thanks in part to Ester’s facility with a crossbow, they repel bandits in the Alps, and a gang of toughs in the lawless Holy City. The author does tuck in a pair of romantic subplots, while steering away from violence of the sexual sort, and draws the tale to an upbeat close with the pilgrims and re-met friends readying themselves to depart for England. Though not so vivid or bitter as Catherine Jinks’s contemporaneous Pagan stories, this, like its predecessors, will leave readers pondering, as the author puts it, “the terrible paradox—that caring, responsible individuals can engage in acts of brutality.” (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: May 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-670-03631-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2005
From England’s Children’s Laureate, a searing WWI-era tale of a close extended family repeatedly struck by adversity and injustice. On vigil in the trenches, 17-year-old Thomas Peaceful looks back at a childhood marked by guilt over his father’s death, anger at the shabby treatment his strong-minded mother receives from the local squire and others—and deep devotion to her, to his brain-damaged brother Big Joe, and especially to his other older brother Charlie, whom he has followed into the army by lying about his age. Weaving telling incidents together, Morpurgo surrounds the Peacefuls with mean-spirited people at home, and devastating wartime experiences on the front, ultimately setting readers up for a final travesty following Charlie’s refusal of an order to abandon his badly wounded brother. Themes and small-town class issues here may find some resonance on this side of the pond, but the particular cultural and historical context will distance the story from American readers—particularly as the pace is deliberate, and the author’s hints about where it’s all heading are too rare and subtle to create much suspense. (Fiction. 11-13, adult)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-439-63648-5
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2004
Paulsen recalls personal experiences that he incorporated into Hatchet (1987) and its three sequels, from savage attacks by moose and mosquitoes to watching helplessly as a heart-attack victim dies. As usual, his real adventures are every bit as vivid and hair-raising as those in his fiction, and he relates them with relish—discoursing on “The Fine Art of Wilderness Nutrition,” for instance: “Something that you would never consider eating, something completely repulsive and ugly and disgusting, something so gross it would make you vomit just looking at it, becomes absolutely delicious if you’re starving.” Specific examples follow, to prove that he knows whereof he writes. The author adds incidents from his Iditarod races, describes how he made, then learned to hunt with, bow and arrow, then closes with methods of cooking outdoors sans pots or pans. It’s a patchwork, but an entertaining one, and as likely to win him new fans as to answer questions from his old ones. (Autobiography. 10-13)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-385-32650-5
Page Count: 150
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000
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