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A Before-and-After moment of great personal significance, and a formative read that held up to a 2001 re-read.

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By Charles van Buren on July 1, 2018

Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase

If you are not familiar with Cecilia Holland's writing, I strongly recommend that you not begin with this one. FIREDRAKE is her first published novel (1966 I think), but the fourth that she wrote. Of the other three, JERUSALEM was later published after revisions and polishing. Parts of the other two were used in other works. Ms. Holland grew and matured as a writer. FIREDRAKE shows some flashes of her developing skill but is not indicative of the great writer she became.

The writing style in Firedrake uses many short, choppy sentences. A sample: "The horse reared. He bolted. Laeghaire braced himself. The horse dragged him a few feet.". This sort of thing is repeated throughout the novel. Another irritating thing is that a scene will end with the next sentence taking the reader elsewhere. No warnings, symbols or spaces. No division at all in the Kindle edition except for chapters.

Laeghaire is not a particularly likeable main character. Men fear him and follow him into battle but Ms. Holland does not give him many friends. He becomes close to William, Duke of Normandy, later styled The Conqueror. Then, for no apparent good reason, he.... Stop. No spoilers. Suffice it to say that I did not like the ending. Perhaps Laeghaire became frightened of possible success.

161 reviews8 followers

I found this writing style suited the subject content extremely well. The knight is a man of deeds. He is not a man of words. There is a starkness and a harsh clarity to the writing which I loved.

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The story of William’s rise is told from the perspective of Laeghaire, a wandering Irish mercenary knight. Holland does a great job of making the reader care about his plight. Her prose is fantastic and despite the slimness of the volume, she takes her time in building the story. It’s not a slow burn; there’s plenty of action. But I also got a sense of time and place and person. I found Laeghaire to be boorish at times but I was captured by his story up through the final page. And that’s mostly a credit to the writer.

While there is some political maneuvering discussed as Laeghaire gets close to the eventual King William (sorry for spoilers but again, this is historical fiction), the focus of the book is his journey to different places. It’s not as much of a quest, rather a story about a person who has a specific duty to do one thing and carries it out to the best of his abilities, not worried what will come of tomorrow. In this regard, it made for a more engaging read as I truly did not know what was happening next on Laeghaire’s journey, even as I knew how the history itself would unfold.

The gender part is tough at times. Holland is honest about the book’s 11th century era sexual politics. She doesn’t wallow in them, per se but some scenes are uncomfortable to read. I guess it helps this was written by a woman but there are still some pretty awful dynamics so be forewarned. Otherwise, if you want a well-written historical fiction read, check this out.

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In the beginning, you're just plopped down with the main character with no background of what time period it is, or who he is, or anything really. This character, Laeghaire, is a mercenary, and it quickly becomes apparent that he's a mercenary some time in the Middle Ages. (BTW, we're told in the prologue that his name -Laeghaire- is the Gaelic spelling of Lear, as in King Lear, though I think that's where the resemblance ends.)

Turns out he's a mercenary in the 11th century. And he's going to end up at the Battle of Hastings with William the Conqueror.

Laeghaire is a rough and violent man, but he's also a soldier in a time where battles were rough and violent and face to face, for the most part. He has two horses that he loves, but they're never named, just "the black" and "the brown." He ends up with a woman because he saw her being beaten by her father (I think) and bought her from him for a doxy. He stands up to rulers, including William, and is frequently chastized by them for being mouthy or insubordinate. He has a reputation as a very great fighter. He likes fighting, and he likes roaming. One of his names is Laeghaire of the Long Road, because of his unsettled ways. He was born in Ireland, but hasn't been there in years.

It's really a character study, but told almost totally from outside Laeghaire's head. We almost never see his thoughts. We see his actions, and can, in some cases, infer what he's feeling from them.

I picked up a Cecelia Holland book because of hearing her on The Coode Street Podcast a couple of times. She primarily writes historical fiction (like this). While I didn't find the prose gripping, I kept coming back to see what Laeghaire was going to do, and what was going to happen with him. You can see some of the things that happen coming from a long ways away. Other things are more surprising.

I think The Firedrake was her first novel, published in 1966. I think it would be interesting to read a later book of hers to see how her writing had changed over the years.

As to the title: Vocabulary.com defines a firedrake as "a creature of Teutonic mythology; usually represented as breathing fire and having a reptilian body and sometimes wings". Not a literal description, but pretty good as a figurative one.

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Anyways, what made Floating Worlds so great was Holland's style, her voice as a writer. I was extremely happy to see that her writing style was very similar. Short, choppy sentences. You never see the inner mind or psychology of the characters. The story moves by plot and action. Things are always happening, even when nothing is happening. The time you spend away from the book leaves you in suspense. This is what makes Holland a great writer.

Firedrake follows an Irish knight in the year 1006. Named Laeghair, Laeghair from Traelee, Laeghair of the Long Road, he makes his way as a ronin [wanderer] into a commander of William the Conquerer's Army. The novel ends at the Battle of Hastings, where William takes England. Laeghair is very sour, a real asshole. He's a beserker knight that fights like a devil. He kills a guy just because he insulted him in front of the other knights. He's a leader of an army. He buys a woman he sees getting beat up. Hilde bears him a son and two still born children but at the end of the novel he leaves her when she's pregnant yet again, saying, "Leave me alone." He never married her nor did he love her. Yet there were times when he was happy with her. Having that as the ending had me thinking of Laeghaire as a real piece of work. After pillaging a town, he has his way with a woman. She doesn't cry out but it's still considered rape. This guy is bad news.

What's interesting is William the Conquerer's personality. Is it based on real historical facts? The man seems to be an enigma in the novel. Laeghair pleases William very much, and in fact, Laeghair saves William's life at the Battle of Hastings. Not only that, but William finds delight in Laeghair's snotty attitude towards everyone. They would make great friends if one were not subordinate to the other. The historical aspects of this novel were so foreign to me that it was almost like reading a science fiction novel. I couldn't relate to anything here, instead, I had to use my imagination and try to imagine a world where people fight with swords, axes, ride horses, drink beer and wine every day, and women aren't healthy enough to give birth to healthy children, resulting in a lot of stillborn deaths.

The physical combat here is brutal. But not gruesome. It reminded me of the Illiad in the way the combat is described. Sort of. But Holland has her own unique way of action as well. Because of her short and choppy style, the action moves along very fast. Like a real fight. It leaves you wanting more and more combat but then the battle is over and something new occurs.

Lastly, this is a remarkable debut novel. Holland got me into historical fiction from Floating Worlds and now Firedrake. I have in my possession two of her other historical fiction novels, Jerusalem and The Angel and the Sword. I never thought I would be into historical fiction but here I am. I'm reading new genres other than science fiction, classics, and philosophy. Always good to explore new territory. Especially if the writing is so damn good.

Holland wrote this when she was only 22, still studying at college, probably to get her Masters. I don't think she had any grand goals or ideas when she wrote this novel. I don't think the story needed anything grand or idealistic, it works as historical fiction work on its own without any gimmicks. This is a simple, plain novel. No fancy bells or whistles. Just plain old good writing. Highly recommended if you like history, fiction, medieval history in particular.

Check out my review for Cecelia Holland's science fiction epic, Floating Worlds- http://ofigueroamusic.blogspot.com/20...

Author  12 books68 followers

This is Holland's first novel, and it shows a bit as in her first pages of terse, short sentences she's grappling with her craft and learning the difference between short sentences that are monotonous and repetitive, and short sentences interspersed with sentences of more varied length leading to an effect that would be praised as 'hard-boiled' in a crime novel, but which suits descriptions of deadly but prosaic men going about the business of warfare and statecraft. Laegharie is an intense, morose, driven, haunted man who is beating off bandits one minute and buying peasant girls the next; pillaging a landscape one minute, doting on his son by the bought peasant girl the next; but on the whole, Laeghaire is not destined for happiness, whether by mischance or his own love of violence, and if a happy life eludes him, then violence he gets a-plenty, waiting for him on a hill outside Hastings.

Anyway, it's superb.

152 reviews1 follower

Holland has a very abrupt writing style, writing in short simplistic sentences. Don't expect any sprawling metaphorical details about the setting or the characters. I do think that her writing style pairs well with the character of Laeghaire. Laeghaire is, first and foremost, a fighter who doesn't put up with nonsense, and when he does talk, he is curt and honest. Laeghaire is a man who learns how to love during the course of the story. He learns that he loves war and fighting.

The Firedrake is an interesting read about war, and about what war means to men who love war.

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While this book does a good job of capturing the historical detail, it ends up just feeling like a catalog/chronology. "This happened, and then this happened, and then this happened." It almost feels as if the author was so intent on being historically accurate that she feared that by injecting any feeling or interior monologues would lessen the realism.

I might try one of her later works another time, but not just yet.

If you like Bernard Cornwell, such as his Saxon Series/The Last Kingdom — then you’ll enjoy Hollands.

Author  1 book4 followers

I wasn’t sure how I’d like this book, but I decided to give it a try anyway (my junior-high English teacher, Mr. Phillips, encouraged us to expand our literary repertoires/horizons).

So I read it. Ugh. What a wretched story. The hero (a Gaelic name spelled “Laeghaire” but pronounced “Lear”) was a wretch himself—and I was rooting for the creep to die! The guy was a scoundrel, using the heroine only for sex, sleeping with another woman, and loving only himself and murder. (If I didn’t already have a warm regard for and generally like and esteem the Irish, this book would’ve had me positively loathing them because, yes, the “hero” was Irish—and he sucked!)

As to the novel, I didn’t much enjoy the authoress’s (Cecelia Holland) style of writing. It felt too unnatural, a sort of badump-badump-badump rhythm as if it were, “See Dick run. Dick ran fast. Dick ran so fast he lost his footing and fell down and laughed instead of cried.” Almost as that—and, for one born, reared, and educated in America (as I believe she was), she has about as good a relationship with commas as the Brits (meaning, she doesn’t use them often or, if used, not well, not in the right places to keep the cadence, the rhythm of the story going properly). I don’t pretend to be a punctuating genius, though, but it just didn’t flow well for me.

If I were asked: “Is this worth the read?”—my answer would be “no.” I’ll admit I didn’t really read it (I skimmed it in a great many places because I don’t like to read fighting scenes with men on horses—I don’t like to read about the horses getting hurt and how (I made the mistake of reading about Jeremy Poldark’s end in the battle sequence of Waterloo, I believe, and read what fate befell a horse(s) in that story—and no thank you to another horse-battle scene ever again!)), but I read most of it and what I read just didn’t make sense in places. There were references to things between Laeghaire and another character, say, that weren’t explained, as if I, the reader, should know enough about 1066 A.D. that I should catch the subtleties of the time. Well, I knew nothing of William the Conqueror (it’s why I read this book, to learn in novel form—Miss Holland’s supposed to be “an original novelist of great strength and power” and know about the history of the event) and didn’t get some aspects of conversations. Other times, I did get it and thought the conversation was dry or a joke (or what have you) flat, dull. But it could all hinge on the fact that I hated the hero and wasn’t fond of the heroine, Hilde (simply because she was a dope for letting Laeghaire use her).

So, of course, I don’t recommend the story. It didn’t have enough “good parts” to make up for the appalling quantity of “bad or dull parts.” As I said, I ended up wanting Laeghaire to be killed in battle so that silly Hilde would be free of him (it would have been for her own good). And what happens? The man survives the final battle—and dumps her anyway, knowing she’s carrying yet another one of his children! He even goes so far as to tell her, point-blank, he never loved her and then pawns her off on a lesser character! Truly, the man was a cad and a heel.

Grade: Pass (doesn't deserve even one star!)