Home :: Books :: Audiocassettes  

Arts & Photography
Audio CDs
Audiocassettes

Biographies & Memoirs
Business & Investing
Children's Books
Christianity
Comics & Graphic Novels
Computers & Internet
Cooking, Food & Wine
Entertainment
Gay & Lesbian
Health, Mind & Body
History
Home & Garden
Horror
Literature & Fiction
Mystery & Thrillers
Nonfiction
Outdoors & Nature
Parenting & Families
Professional & Technical
Reference
Religion & Spirituality
Romance
Science
Science Fiction & Fantasy
Sports
Teens
Travel
Women's Fiction
Vagabond

Vagabond

List Price: $25.95
Your Price: $16.35
Product Info Reviews

<< 1 2 3 >>

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Mysteries uncovered and battles won - Book 2
Review: "Vagabond" is the 2nd book in the 3-book medieval Grail Quest series. Thomas Hookton is the bowman-protagonist from the 1st book, Harlequin/Archer's Tale. ("Harlequin" is the name of the book published in the UK; "The Archer's Tale" is the same book with a different title, published in the USA.) Vagabond begins with Thomas and his wife Eleanor traveling with a monk. England is still fighting with the French, while the Scots decide to help France in destroying England. Thomas also finds his cousin has been enlisted in the Bishop/ Cardinal's service as an assassin. Thomas receives a book written by his crazed father about the Grail. All of Europe learns of the Grail, and all seek it. While Thomas seeks help to decipher the book, he is given into the hands of the enemy by spies who wish to gain the Church's trust. This book in the Grail series is more about mystery than love; there are still many blood-broiling battle scenes across England. Thomas may lose some close friends in Vagabond; he also gains many new friends. Bernard Cornwell keeps you in suspense throughout the book, while foreshadowing uncertain futures. I recommend this book and the Grail Quest series whole heartedly. For anyone who likes traveling history via intrigue, drama and acts of bravery, this book will be perfect for you.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Vintage Cornwall - no one fantasizes obscure history better
Review: Another 'off the cuff' epic from Bernard Cornwall who must surely rank as one of the world's most prolific writers.

However, you MUST have read the Archer's Tale in order to understand 'this' tale. There are too many weird named characters with long histories to grab the story without knowing the first book.

As usual the book ends with a settle-piece blood and gore pitched battle - when both foe and friend are scewered, decapititated, run-through and generally disembowled in excellent Cornwellian fashion. Great boys stuff!

Recommended to anyone for sitting out a long aeroplane trip, sipping a beer on the beach, or generally stuck indoors' a rainy sunday afternoon.

Mr Cornwall, you are the best.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Second book of the Grail Quest series
Review: At the risk of being branded a heretic, I rather wish that Cornwell had chosen to write about the Hundred Years War without introducing the contrived business about the Holy Grail. I am sure a master like Cornwell could have figured out a better way to keep the characters moving about. Nevertheless, VAGABOND lives up to the justly deserved reputation of its predecessor, with the same fast pace, the same entertaining blend of complex and one-dimensional characters, the same rich historical detail, an even greater panoramic sweep than in THE ARCHER'S TALE (now we have Scots and ships involved, too), and, as always with Cornwell, the same painstaking attention to battle. Well worth reading.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Almost better than the first volume
Review: Bernard Cornwell has always had a talent for writing great novels and will always be known for the Sharpe serires, but this Grail Quest series is probably his best. This book is the best for any fan of historical fiction, or history in general. It is one of those rare books that I could hardly put down and found myself constantly thinking about it when I was not reading it.

To be honest, I was worried when the book first started as Thomas had seemingly become somewhat holier since the first book ended, but that simply turned out to be a mistaken interpretation on my part, as Thomas is quickly up to his neck in the same chivarly and devilry as in The Archer's Tale.

As with his other books, Cornwell has blended the fictional events and the historical events so well as to make it almost impossible to tell when the history ends and the fiction begins. Thankfully, Cornwell is one of the few honest historical fiction writers to actually offer historical notes with his books to tell what's what.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: More Thomas the Archer, More Carnage
Review: Bernard Cornwell's "Vagabond" continues the saga of Thomas of Hookton, archer extraordinaire, that began in "The Archer's Tale." In the first novel, we meet Thomas, illegitimate son of a seemingly mad, definitely murdered priest. Thomas is educated but has a ne'er-do-well streak a mile wide, and his life's ambition is to be an archer.

Living during the Hundred Years War, Thomas's devotion to archery is smart, since the archer rules the battlefield. Archers use mighty bows that smash arrows through shields and armor with horrible effect. Cornwell opens "Vagabond" with one of the archers' most notable historic triumphs, where an outmanned English force destroys a larger Scottish army at Neville's Cross near Durham. Nobody writes a better battle scene than Cornwell - his descriptions of violence are gripping, and he never loses sight of the logistics of a battle as well as its ebb and flow.

Some of these descriptions are most vivid when Thomas and Robbie, a Scotsman, terrorize the countryside, picking off an invading force piece by piece, using supersitition as well as lethal force to bring terror to their foes.

Thomas is doomed to spend much of "Vagabond" in the deepest despair. He loses friends and lovers -- life at during the Hundred Years War truly was precarious, and Cornwell does not spare characters merely because they are Thomas's friends. Cornwell's willingness to "kill off" characters, in addition to being realistic, keeps the reader on the edge of his seat because all characters are in peril at any given moment. Fortunes can turn on a dime.

Thomas is also charged with tracking down the Holy Grail, using an arcane book drafted by his father. Thomas has no mania for the Grail, but others do. Not only are other members of Thomas's family after the Grail, so is the Inquisition. And Thomas has an unfortunate encounter with the Inquisition that is even more terrifying than Cornwell's vivid battle scenes.

"Vagabond" sweeps the reader from the northern reaches of England to a battle on the English Channel and back to France and Brittany. Cornwell does not waste too much time on travelogue-exposition, but he provides enough detail that the reader is always grounded in the scene.

Long on action, spiced with humor and romance, "Vagabond" tells a rip-roaring tale that commands that you tear through its 400 pages. A great read!

In some series, the later books "stand on their own" and can be read out of sequence without missing anything. "Vagabond" is not one of them -- do not read "Vagabond" without reading "The Archer's Tale" first.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A thoroughly enjoyable second....
Review: Bernard Cornwell's 'Vagabond' picks up where 'Harlequin' ended, though Thomas has left France and is approaching Durham with both Father Hobbe and his pregnant soon-to-be-wife, Eleanor. We are told that Edward III has tasked Thomas with finding out more about the legendary Grail and his family's (the Vexilles) connection to it. Before he can reach Durham to speak to Broker Collimore who was the monk responsible for Thomas' father's, Father Ralph of Hookton, care the wily Guy Vexille, present as the servant of the Inquisition Dominician priest De Taillebourg gets there first and ends up murdering the monk, Eleanor and Father Hobbe. I must confess it was slightly surprising the way these two major characters suddenly got written off but further plot lines dicate it was a necessity.
Thomas ends up defending Durham from the invading Scots under David the Bruce, goaded by the French that northern England lay undefended in the Battle of Neville's Cross and we are treated to another particularly intense battle sequence so common to Cornwell's writing. The introduction of Sir William Douglas (who character provides some levity in a time of war) and his son Robbie ensures that Thomas has a new companion when he returns south to Hookton. Whilst Thomas ensures his enemies are fed false information as to his whereabouts he returns to France, to Evecque and becomes the temporary scourage of the Comte de Coutances who is besieging Sir Guillame. Both Thomas, Robbie and Sir Guillame make their escape with the assistance of the friendly Pierre Villeroy and his doting wife, Yvette. Sir Guillame reunites Thomas with Will Skeat (who's not too bad after nearly dying in the previous novel at Crecy) and Mordecai and after a brief skirmish in the English Channel they find themselves back at La Roche-Derrien where Thomas' old flame, Jeanette, has returned. Much of the rest of the novel centres around here, from Thomas' ill-fated raid on Roncelles and capture by de Taillebourg, his subsequent torture and ransoming to Charles de Blois' siege of La Roche. Right down to the final battle scenes where a mixture of luck and sheer bravery save the day, Cornwall's penmanship is excellent. Guy Vexille makes his escape and a lot of the initial wrongs to the other characters associated with Thomas are rectified, but we are left with Thomas and Robbie ready to chase down Guy in the third installment, 'Heretic'.
The two novels of the Grail Quest to date are an enjoyable read. Cornwell's placement of his characters within the reality of history is faultless, his prose-style and plot lines gripping. He provides both magnificent villains and flawed heroes in a world of violence and the right mixture of political intrigue and grim reality to shock. A historical writer at the pinnacle of his time.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A thoroughly enjoyable second....
Review: Bernard Cornwell's `Vagabond' picks up where `Harlequin' ended, though Thomas has left France and is approaching Durham with both Father Hobbe and his pregnant soon-to-be-wife, Eleanor. We are told that Edward III has tasked Thomas with finding out more about the legendary Grail and his family's (the Vexilles) connection to it. Before he can reach Durham to speak to Broker Collimore who was the monk responsible for Thomas' father's, Father Ralph of Hookton, care the wily Guy Vexille, present as the servant of the Inquisition Dominician priest De Taillebourg gets there first and ends up murdering the monk, Eleanor and Father Hobbe. I must confess it was slightly surprising the way these two major characters suddenly got written off but further plot lines dicate it was a necessity.
Thomas ends up defending Durham from the invading Scots under David the Bruce, goaded by the French that northern England lay undefended in the Battle of Neville's Cross and we are treated to another particularly intense battle sequence so common to Cornwell's writing. The introduction of Sir William Douglas (who character provides some levity in a time of war) and his son Robbie ensures that Thomas has a new companion when he returns south to Hookton. Whilst Thomas ensures his enemies are fed false information as to his whereabouts he returns to France, to Evecque and becomes the temporary scourage of the Comte de Coutances who is besieging Sir Guillame. Both Thomas, Robbie and Sir Guillame make their escape with the assistance of the friendly Pierre Villeroy and his doting wife, Yvette. Sir Guillame reunites Thomas with Will Skeat (who's not too bad after nearly dying in the previous novel at Crecy) and Mordecai and after a brief skirmish in the English Channel they find themselves back at La Roche-Derrien where Thomas' old flame, Jeanette, has returned. Much of the rest of the novel centres around here, from Thomas' ill-fated raid on Roncelles and capture by de Taillebourg, his subsequent torture and ransoming to Charles de Blois' siege of La Roche. Right down to the final battle scenes where a mixture of luck and sheer bravery save the day, Cornwall's penmanship is excellent. Guy Vexille makes his escape and a lot of the initial wrongs to the other characters associated with Thomas are rectified, but we are left with Thomas and Robbie ready to chase down Guy in the third installment, `Heretic'.
The two novels of the Grail Quest to date are an enjoyable read. Cornwell's placement of his characters within the reality of history is faultless, his prose-style and plot lines gripping. He provides both magnificent villains and flawed heroes in a world of violence and the right mixture of political intrigue and grim reality to shock. A historical writer at the pinnacle of his time.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Rousing battles and so-so plot
Review: Cornwell is probably the best historical fiction author that I have read. His attention to detail and the amazing strength and skill the English Longbowmen exhibited during this era is without question extensive and fascinating.

Also great are his heart stopping, gritty battle scenes and the everyday life in this turbulent time. Priests are not priestly, plunder and pillage go hand in hand with honor and glory. The harsh reality of the matter is that in this era, the Archers were the lords of the battlefields. And Vagabond helps depict this.

Cornwell, on the other hand, does not do as well developing the plot of the "Holy Grail". His chief character, Thomas of Hookton, is an exceedingly reluctant searcher for the grail and while educated, shows glimpses of an interesting character who wishes to be a "leader of archers" but he acts much like a petulant little boy when confronted with the Grail quest.

Again, an amazing story in the historical archer/longbow perspective and the battle scenes are second to none, but in this book, too many convenient coincidences along the plot for my tastes.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great Book
Review: Great book full of great battles, great characters, and a great plot.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: historical fiction?
Review: Historical fiction? Why? Because they kill each other, drink ale, shoot arrows and ride horses? Read "Beloved Enemy" if you want REAL historical fiction, not just a bunch of pop fluff in which a new chapter starts every 3rd page, and every 4th page is blank ( I think it's called "padding") so that a 300 page book becomes a 450 page one.
The story Archer's Tale gives you little background for the conflict. A little nothing of a town in England is ransacked and burned by the French. The next thing you know, it's a World War. How did it get there from here? You're never told! You don't know why all these people are willing to get killed over a supposed relic, and each time the enemy can't be beaten our Hero finds a way of sneaking in, usually through the water but some times through the front door in a disguise. The French must be REALLY stupid, eh? And isn't it convenient to hate them today since they didn't support our invasion of Iraq, even though almost nobody else did either, and without the French we'd still be English subjects, but ignore that small detail and pass the Freedom Fries!
I saw a bumper sticker the other day: boycott French goods. When was the last time you bought something French anyhow? Now THAT will make a big difference to them, won't it!?


<< 1 2 3 >>

© 2004, ReviewFocus or its affiliates