Hawkwoods Voyage by Paul Kearney, a Review
This is part one of “The Monarchies of God”. Presumably the traditional fantasy trilogy. Which is appropriate because this is a fairly traditional fantasy story. No elves and dwarves though. Instead the author has plumped for something closer to Europe in the middle-ages. The so called “Monarchies of God” (a group of countries) are being invaded by the heathen Murduks. And they’re losing. Their most holy city has been sacked yet they wrangle amongst themselves.
The church is equally.divided with men scheming to become the next High Pontif. Captain Richard Hawkwood is commissioned by the the King of Hebrion’s cousin to sale across the western ocean to a recently discovered and uncharted land.
The back cover compares this book to Guy Gavriel Kay and Robert Jordan. Well it doesn’t have the finesse that Kay’s books posses and its far more compact a tale than Jordan could ever write. A better comparison would be with David Gemmell I think.
Like Gemmell, Kearney is strong on the unpleasantness of war. There are also hugely defensible fortresses and attacked “savages”. This is very Gemmell. But Kearney throws some other elements into the mix too. His use of the church is very good. Several different groupings of churchman are introduced and the churches meddling in politics is nicely observed.
Kearney has obviously done his research too. His descriptions of life at sea are convincing and his terminology is good.
On the down side this book does read like book one of a series. As late as half way through this book (and its only 382 pages long) new characters were being introduced. Little if anything was resolved at the end leaving you slightly frustrated.
The story of Hawkwood’s actually voyage is only a small part of the tale told in this book and its not clear what significance it has to the rest of the story at all. No doubt things will become clearer in part 2.
Another point which is both positive and negative is the nature of the characters in the book. Very few of them are entirely sympathetic. This shows a certain depth which is nice but does tend to cause the reader to cheer on some minor characters rather than the supposed central characters.
All in all I enjoyed this, but it was unexceptional. Its well written, it moves along nicely. I’m certainly intrigued enough by the plot to want to read the rest of the series. But I can’t get that excited about it. This could be put down to the fact that I read it straight after finished a truely excellent book though.
Eoghann Irving is amongst other things the creator and Editor of Solar Flare. He has a life long interest in all forms of science fiction and fantasy and a pressing need to share this interest with anyone who will listen. Find out more at his personal website eoghann.com..
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