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A review by gaylebn
The Archer's Tale by Bernard Cornwell
5.0
Interesting and Engaging
I know little of medieval history other than takes of Robin Hood and Ken Follet's Pillars of the Earth series. My limited experience with shooting bows included stringing and shooting recurve bows in a college phys ed course quite a few decades ago. But I still find archery interesting, so when I stumbled across this title, it appealed to me.
The tale is of young Thomas who is a skilled archer in King Edward's service. He travels from England to France in what the author states is the beginning of the Hundred Years War. It was interesting to learn about aspects of medieval warfare, for example the amount of time it took to arm a cannon and how the English dug puts in the battlefield ahead of the battle to impede and cripple the enemy's horses. There are some mildly graphic (is that a thing?) descriptions of battle that I skimmed over out of squeamish -ness. But overall, the novel was a good read and I will eventually read the successive books in this trilogy.
I know little of medieval history other than takes of Robin Hood and Ken Follet's Pillars of the Earth series. My limited experience with shooting bows included stringing and shooting recurve bows in a college phys ed course quite a few decades ago. But I still find archery interesting, so when I stumbled across this title, it appealed to me.
The tale is of young Thomas who is a skilled archer in King Edward's service. He travels from England to France in what the author states is the beginning of the Hundred Years War. It was interesting to learn about aspects of medieval warfare, for example the amount of time it took to arm a cannon and how the English dug puts in the battlefield ahead of the battle to impede and cripple the enemy's horses. There are some mildly graphic (is that a thing?) descriptions of battle that I skimmed over out of squeamish -ness. But overall, the novel was a good read and I will eventually read the successive books in this trilogy.