Heretic

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Summary: The destiny of the Grail
Review: "Heretic", the last book in the 3-book medieval Grail Quest series, is where Thomas Hookton finally confronts his cousin, Guy Vexille. Thomas, with his war-band, travels to Astarac, the former home of his infamous family, The Vexilles. Thomas then finds a lover, Genevieve, while at his stay in Astarac. She was a heretic and persecuted by the Church, and was going to be burned, but Thomas saves her. Subsequently, Thomas is also condemned by the Church during a siege in Astarac. He and Genevieve flee from Astarac, and take refuge with the bandits in the hills. Guy Vexille then hunts them down, but is unsuccessful in capturing them. Compared to the others in the series, Heretic is more about betrayal, deceit and the greediness of the nobleman - while there are also exciting battle scenes. I recommend this book and the Grail Quest series whole heartedly - actually, you must read all three in order.

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Summary: Violent Conclusion to Violent Saga
Review: Bernard Cornwell's Grail Quest trilogy concludes with "Heretic," and a bloody conclusion it is, too.

Thomas of Hookton lives in violent times. In "The Archer's Tale," Thomas's father was butchered by Thomas's cousin, Guy Vexille, and Thomas's woman, Eleanor, was also murdered by Guy in "Vagabond." Thomas has survived several vicious battles and an even more vicious round of torture at the hands of a Dominican priest. And through it all, Thomas has sought the holiest of holy relics, the Grail . . . although Thomas has not always pursued his quest with vigor.

Now, in "Heretic," Thomas at last closes in on the object of his quest by returning to his ancestral home of Astarac. By pursuing the Grail here, Thomas also hopes to draw out his cousin so Thomas can avenge his father and Eleanor.

Cornwell, as usual, keeps Thomas the Archer occupied, wielding a new, mightier bow with the same lethal efficiency. For those who have not yet read this series, the archer was not the little guy standing in the rear picking off foes with little pinpricks. The archer was king of the battlefield, using a variety of arrows to slaughter men and horses, perforating even the strongest armor with cannon-like shots. The arrival of primitive cannon technology in this series does not alter the balance of power.

Thomas, being Thomas, gets sidetracked with romance by falling in love with a beautiful woman (who always seem to turn up for Thomas . . . oh, well -- it pays not to overthink such things). This woman was falsely accused of being a heretic and has been tortured at the hands of an evil priest, much like Thomas. For his chivalry, Thomas is excommunicated. Cast out, he nevertheless pursues his twin goals of revenge and salvation.

Cornwell vividly describes the world of the Hundred Years War. Not only does Thomas have to contend with dastardly kin and mighty men-at-arms, the Black Death is screaming across the land, with horrifying results. Cornwell describes it all with his usual straightforward yet captivating style.

"Heretic" is not a great departure from the earlier two novels in the series. Sharp-eyed readers will have spotted clues in earlier books regarding the Grail and its location, but the mystery is still captivating, and the conclusion is unexpected.

While not exactly a "feel good" book, the Grail Quest series is a fun read, and a rollicking ride across the battlefields of Britain and France. Check it out!

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Summary: Wow!!
Review: Best of the trilogy; could hardly put it down! The man can WRITE I loved the! Aurthurian books and Stonehenge, but this is great, I have no interest whatsoever in the Sharpe series; this is a guy thing.

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Summary: Another Powerful Novel in this Fascinating Series
Review: HERETIC is a tale of adventure, romantic notions, warriors in battle for truths they hold dear, and the search for the elusive Holy Grail of Christendom in the fourteenth century A.D. Bernard Cornwell, the author of numerous historical chronicles, extends his stories from THE ARCHER'S TALE and VAGABOND to a further quest for the Grail in HERETIC. Thomas of Hookton, the bastard son of a noble family, is the archer who leads the Earl of Northampton's archers to the shores of France.

Thomas distinguishes himself in battle for his lord and is given a new challenge. He is to take a small force deep into southern French territory, capture a fortress, defend it and hope to capture his evil cousin, Guy de Vexille. He seeks Astarac in the county of Berat to explore and find the Grail for Northampton. The ransomed Scot leader, Robbie Douglas and Sir Guillaume, an English nobleman, accompany Thomas to France.

Thomas's father was a priest who had kept secret the location of the Grail, if it had existed. The clue to its whereabouts lay in the Latin words he had inscribed on papers left behind before his murder. Thomas doubted its existence. His father had rambled and been considered a lunatic.

The journey becomes complicated when the archers conquer Castillion D'Arbizon and become involved in local politics. To administer justice in the enclave, the conquerors must carry out orders from the Church's governing bishops. A heretic, a young vagabond girl, has been judged and sentenced to death by fire. Thomas, as civil authority, hears the facts and decides that she should live. Local priests disagree with his judgment and excommunicate him from the Church.

Cornwell's vivid imagery of the time and setting in HERETIC places the reader directly in the action. Each pull of the powerful bowstring follows with an adrenaline rush inherent with victory. His description of the warmongering mechanisms are graphic pictures of their times. The book is fiction based on general facts, but is a believable panoramic view of real events.

Priests ruled their local abbeys with ironclad domination and were not to be disobeyed. HERETIC shows the majority as self-serving and mean-spirited. Father Planchard is an exception --- he befriends Thomas. Planchard produces a wooden box, inscribed with the Latin words Thomas's father had ingrained in him, "Calix meus inebrians." The interchange between him and Planchard is coy wordplay at its best.

The accused heretic, Genevieve, is the pivotal figure in the story. Thomas discovers through her that his quest for revenge and reinstatement in the Church he knows diminishes in importance. He learns that peace can be found without the discovery of the Grail. One hopes that future books will expand this fascinating Grail Quest series. HERETIC defines the men of the era and thirsts for more.

--- Reviewed by Judy Gigstad

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Summary: IS THAT ALL THERE IS?
Review: HERETIC is the third(and perhaps last)novel chronicling the adventures of English longbowman, Thomas of Hookton, during the early years of the Hundred Years' War. It will be more enjoyable if one first reads ARCHER and NOMAD. The siege and capture of Calais is glimpsed briefly at the beginning, but most of the story involves the capture and defense of Castillon d'Arbizon by Thomas and some of his comrades from NOMAD. There Thomas and his evil cousin Guy Vexille have their final confrontation. It is the search for the Holy Grail that drives the central characters in HERETIC.

As usual, Cornwell gives the reader a trove of detail about the way war was waged and life was lived in the mid-14th century. We learn about the wearing of plate armor, about special-purpose arrow points, the fortification of medieval castles, and the loading and firing of primitive cannon. We watch a craftsman doing wax-replacement casting. What is missing, for this reader, is Cornwell's usually brilliant evocation of landscape. Gascony does not come alive the way Normandy and Durham did in the earlier books.

HERETIC also gets bogged down by too many grails, counterfeit and (perhaps) otherwise. Cornwell explains how the grail came to a remote fortress in Gascony by quoting a legend that connects it to the heretic Cathars, but fails to trace its whereabouts during the first Christian millennium. Nor does the "true" grail, once found, exhibit any special properties to verify it authenticity. Why let it be found at all, if you aren't going to provide some supernatural fireworks a la Tolkien or Indiana Jones? Cornwell's message seems to be that the grail's only power was its hold on men's imaginations. When Thomas takes the predictably high-minded course, one is likely to wonder, like Peggy Lee, "Is that all there is?"

Earlier Amazon reviewers assume that HERETIC concludes the Thomas of Hookton series. This is reasonable if you think the story of the grail was the real heart of the story. If, however, one believes that the real subject of Cornwell's series is the apogee of the English longbow as a weapon of war then we might expect to follow Thomas at least through the Battle of Poitiers. He certainly deserves a more rousing send-off than HERETIC.

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Summary: Not his best.
Review: I am a big fan of Bernard Cornwell's novels, however, the last of the Archer trilogy was a bit of a disappointment. The story seemed hurried and the characters are either undeveloped or out of character from the earlier two books (what's up with Robbie?) It is as if Mr. Cornwell rushed to finish the book too quickly. The entire series lacks the grit and intensity of the Sharpe novels and fails to match the sophisticated story telling of the Arthur (Winter King) trilogy. There is such a thing as being overly prolific. Hopefully, Mr. Cornwell will slow down next time out.

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Summary: A series worth reading
Review: I'm a big fan of Bernard Cornwell, and found this series very satisfying. I count on his books for their historical detail, great characters, insights into human nature and page-turning action. Some thoughts on reading this book: No betrayals sting harder than when we're betrayed by our friends. No gift is greater than being forgiven when we least deserve it. No greater crimes are committed than those that are committed in God's name.

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Summary: Of the latest Cornwell efforts this one is the best
Review: I've been a fan of Bernard Cornwell since the Sharpe series appeared in the States. As of late I've found the Sharpe series repetitious post-Waterloo. But this latest effort by Cornwell brings back the frailties and strengths of being a soldier using "quaint" weaponry. The battles scenes,as always, written with taut naration but full and richly detailed. This latest is one of the better ones yet I found Vagabond to be the better of the three so far.

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Summary: Average Ending to a Great Series
Review: In Heretic, author Bernard Cornwell takes the reader back to the world of medieval Europe, as war and disease wrack the continent. Nations war against each other even as they themselves are torn usunder by powerstruggle and relgious strife. The church offers little but corruption and sabotage, as nefarious church leaders pursue their own agendas at the expense of the citizenry. Through this haze of blood and death, we read of our vaunted hero, the young and brave Thomas of Hookton, an English archer on a special quest. While fighting for the crown in France, Thomas begins to put the pieces of a puzzle together. Trying to better understand his own mysterious past, Thomas finds clues that point to a great history, and an even greater destiny for his disgraced family. For, it was his family, the Cathar nobles known as the Vexille's, who possessed the holy of holies, the Grail itself. Lost to parts unknown, Thomas has been hunting across the entire continent for the treasure of Christ. Along the way, he has come up against all sorts of opponents, most notably his own cousin, the horrificly violent Guy Vexille, aka The Harlequin. In the final installment, Thomas comes up against both his cousin and a much more powerful and wide ranging force, the Catholic Church itself.

The beginning of Heretic takes us to where Vagabond left off. Thomas is a celebrated archer who has gained a few friends along the way, among them a poor knight and a captured Scottish noble. With these friends, Thomas seeks to take his quest further into the territory of the Vexille, as he is not the only one who has a score to settle with the infamous Harlequin. Upon his travels, Thomas quickly becomes mixed up in internal religious and political strife, as he rescues a woman about to be burned at the stake. He quickly falls in love with the free spirit, even as the sanctions of the church begin to take a toll on him and his men. The power of superstition was formidable then, and Thomas' role as commander is severely threatened as the church, with its own designs, begins to come down harder on the lowly archer. A conspiracy of high church officials, with their own designs on the grail and its power, target Thomas, for both his knowledge and his crimes against them. The assault becomes too much, and Thomas must venture out on his own, roaming the countryside as a full fledged heretic.

Thomas eventually gets back on his feet and readies to challenge his enemies more directly. This enemy includes his most hated one, Guy himself, who, at the behest of various church officials, has picked up the scent of his cousin and is ready to kill him, once and for all. The main characters of the series, both bad and good, meet at the city of Astarac for the final showdown, where the grail, or at least the promise of it, are at stake. At the same time, the Black Death begins its rampage, and the battle becomes all the more desperate. Thomas and Guy finally meet in direct battle, and their final faceoff could change the fate of a whole continent.

Heretic is another great addition to the Hookton series, but it pales in comparison to the other two. While a good book on its own, it seems to lose the dramatic chase element that the first two books had. Thomas and his hunt seem to lose the absolute excitement they held before. There is little mystery in this book, as we are familiar with most of the themes found in Cromwell's finale. Also missing is battle on the grand stage that were so lovingly detailed by Cromwell in prior books. The ending was extremely disappointing in my opinion, as the goal that the readers so desperately awaited is kind of limited importance after its all over. Still, Heretic has some great battle scenes and Thomas is an absolutely wonderful character. I hope Cromwell brings him back in some way.

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Summary: Don't read this 1 without reading the first 2 in the series
Review: Like Cornwell's Starbuck series, you must read THE ARCHER'S TALE and VAGABOND before reading HERETIC. And of the three, this is the worst.

I read with relish THE ARCHER'S TALE. Likewise, VAGABOND, though at times a little gruesome, had all the ingredients of an interesting historical novel: great battles, interesting characters, betrayal, redemption, evil churchmen, a quest, etc.

However, the first thing I noticed about HERETIC was that the visualizations were gone. With scant detail, I couldn't visualize the castle in and around which much of the action takes place, the face of the "most beautiful woman" they ever saw, nor any of the other people and places of the book. Cornwell gives one of the least visual descriptions of Yersinia Pestis ever.

And even though there was Thomas' usual love interest present (a different woman each time), no endearments passed between them.

What I most missed were the battle scenes. Oh, there were some but neither a satisfying number nor of the scope and pagentry that characterized those in the earlier two books.

Finally, you will have to read the first 2 novels in this series to understand who is who and why they are doing what they're doing in this one. In fact, I think a better course may be to read those two, and to wait until this one can be found in a used book store.