Agincourt

This is a story of mud, blood, guts, and miracles. The legend of the infamous fifteenth-century battle of Agincourt, miraculously won by a bedraggled and outnumbered invading English army against the French, is beautifully told with a seasoned and convincing voice. Charles Keating skillfully negotiates between the saints, sinners, lords, and pawns of the English. Inexplicably missing from this stellar performance is a French accent, the lack of which sometimes makes it difficult to know which side is speaking. However, this book is so compelling, and the performance so extraordinary, that the fault is minor. This audiobook is a tribute to an oral tradition that began with battles won and lost over sovereignty and the fickle favoritism of the gods. L.P. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

October 13, 2008
A literary veteran of the Napoleonic Wars and the U.S. Civil War, Cornwell returns to the Hundred Years War era in this action-packed if slightly melodramatic epic about King Henry V and the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. Nicholas Hook, an English forester, is on the run after interfering with a rapist priest and ends up a mercenary defender at Soissons, where he saves a young and beautiful novitiate, Melisande. With his French prize in tow, he returns to England and signs on with Henry's army as an archer. Back on French soil, he fights and slogs his way to Agincourt, where 6,000 Englishmen confront 30,000 French soldiers. Hearing the voice of St. Crispinian whispering to him in times of personal crisis, Hook has his hands full with the French and defending himself from the vengeance-seeking rapist priest and Melisande's father. The crisply rendered battle scenes are adrenaline rushes of blood, thunder and clashing swords that transport the reader back to the early 15th century. Unfortunately, Hook's Hollywood-ready construction undercuts the “you are there” feeling of Cornwell's otherwise vivid recreation of Henry V's greatest military triumph.