h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I found the Defel/Merlin relationship more believable than most of the Arthur/Merlin relationships that have popped up in the past. Defel's status as a kind of "everyman" viewing the world with commonsense and compassion helps but the brutality of the time in perspective.

I like Derfel very much, he's got an innate decency that is very endearing.

He's also a dab hand with a sword, a winning combination.

oh yes, that's the other reason i like him, it's always a pleasure watching somebody good at his work.

Well i finished the French Executioner. What made the book worth every penny despite that was the scene with the St Anthony fire , and the headsman yarn was not half bad either. But I must say i was quite indifferent to Jean's, the hero's, fate, and the fate of everybody else. Couldn't care about these people. I did "like" the big bad German , he was the most interesting person of the whole cast i thought.
But the St Anthonies fire redeemed it all, brilliant idea!

I thought that the book suffered from the fact that the author could have probably got a trilogy out of all the places, events and people that he insisted on including. I mean first of all Anne Bolyn's executioner finds that she's an enchanting witch who charges him with a holy quest and the mighty relic that is her own hand. Then said executioner is teamed up with a stereotypical viking and his wolfhound (the guy even reads the damn runes, so why not give him a horned hat and a perchant to pilliage as well!) and they go on a merry dance around Europe to escape a power-mad bishop and his syphallitic brother with a cross-dressing Jewish lass and a half-mad journeyman from Munster. Along the way they are sold into slavery, treated to mad Tuscan traditions, meet an alchemist about to stumble upon the philosopher's stone and arrive back in Munster just in time for the Anabaptist uprising!

A good book, but too much going on in one place if you ask me and to the effect that none of the characters were fleshed out all that much.

I agree that Jean was a little indifferant as a hero, but Heinrich did get put through the mill a bit, didn't he?

Yes it was too many places, and the damn hand got lost and recovered once or twice too often. And he could have got much more mileage out of the galley for instance. But i understand it's a first effort of the writer, and for that it's quite commendable.
Also there is the other extreme, about which we talked before, those "bestseller" writers killing their books by trying to get the maximum number of words out of it.

The characters were incredibly flat and diffuse, I think even Heinrich had more potential, and the evil lascivous archbishop was handled very badly. The viking wore the horned helmet allright, even though the author didn't say so, he was so stereotypical, but i didn't mind him too much, being partial to Vikings.
As for that Beck woman, and that Januck janissary, they only annoyed me!

And even so, i don't regret having read the book, there were momentary glimpses of something much bigger and better. But i doubt the author is the writer to bring it out. The lovemaking and fighting was way too smarmy in places.

For me its been an instruction. Lets see if i can learn from his mistakes!
Thanks to you again!

Just started reading one about Hannibal that looks promising...I've always been fascinated by the rivalry between Rome and Carthage and I wanted to read the book before the film came out (in which the rumour is that Vin Deisel has been cast in the title role, so you should be alright there!).

No soppiness threatening then, hopefully? I'm so tired of the soppines.

Just heard that for a new Troy movie they casted a black actor as Ajax. Can't recall any passage in the Ilias indicating that Ajax was a black man? Why Troy to be pc about? Why can't they make a movie about the splendours of Great Zimbabwe and cast him as the king thereof, and as Ajax some big massive Ancient Greek type, just as dear old Homer's immortal verses conjured up before my dreaming eye?
Why oh why?