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annelyle's review
4.0
The Sword of Albion is the tale of Will Swyfte: swordsman, adventurer, rake, and England’s greatest spy. He is famed throughout the kingdom, thanks to ballads and pamphlets – so how can he work in secret when everyone knows who he is? The truth is that his real work is against an Enemy who have long known his identity, and his fight against them requires more than stealth and a ready rapier.
The story ranges from London to Edinburgh and down into the Iberian Peninsula, culminating in the attempted invasion of England by the Spanish – the famous armada of 1588. The action moves relentlessly from set-piece to set-piece, dragging the reader along in Swyfte’s wake as he is repeatedly captured and makes another dramatic escape. Think James Bond meets Pirates of the Caribbean; not only would this make a great movie, but since Chadbourn is a scriptwriter as well, it reads like a great movie.
Will Swyfte is not an arrogant mysogynist like Bond, however. OK, so he indulges in wine and women (sometimes to excess) to blot out the memories of the terrible things he has to do for Queen and country, but at heart he is a romantic, haunted by the memory of his lost love. His companions, though getting much less of the limelight, are also complex, well-drawn characters with believable motivations, though some are decidedly less sympathetic than Will.
The historical setting is well-drawn, with enough detail to satisfy the Elizabethan buffs amongst us without slowing down the action. The filthiness and smelliness of London is sometimes laid on a little heavily, but it does provide a contrast with the elegant, blossom-fragrant citadels of Spain.
I have only a few small quibbles, mostly the nitpicking of a fellow writer that will probably go unnoticed by other readers. There are a few places where information is repeated, or spelt out in narrative immediately after it has been explained in dialogue. And in one scene, Will somehow manages to hold a rapier to a bad guy’s throat and simultaneously whisper in his ear – pretty impressive with a blade that was normally around 36-40 inches! (I assume he is using the tip, since rapiers were not terribly sharp near the hilt). My attention did start to drift a little during the sea-battle, but that sort of thing is always hard to do in a novel. It wasn’t badly written – quite the contrary – but every time the action shifted away from Will towards ships in combat, I just wanted to skip ahead to the next bit of derring-do :)
I was also a little disappointed that the Enemy resorted to mundane physical torture, when they are so good at the psychological kind, but I guess it had to be clear that they were capable of inflicting horrible torments on those Will cares about. On the other hand, kudos to Chadbourn for writing torture scenes that didn’t give me nightmares. He sensibly focuses on the interrogation that is the point of the scene, rather than gratuitous descriptions of the torture itself. Books being so much more intimate a medium than film, it takes very little to make a strong impact on the engaged reader.
In summary, this is an entertaining page-turner with strong, sympathetic characters and a fascinating, terrifying setting – what more could one want from a fantasy novel? I for one am eagerly looking forward to reading more of Will’s adventures…
The story ranges from London to Edinburgh and down into the Iberian Peninsula, culminating in the attempted invasion of England by the Spanish – the famous armada of 1588. The action moves relentlessly from set-piece to set-piece, dragging the reader along in Swyfte’s wake as he is repeatedly captured and makes another dramatic escape. Think James Bond meets Pirates of the Caribbean; not only would this make a great movie, but since Chadbourn is a scriptwriter as well, it reads like a great movie.
Will Swyfte is not an arrogant mysogynist like Bond, however. OK, so he indulges in wine and women (sometimes to excess) to blot out the memories of the terrible things he has to do for Queen and country, but at heart he is a romantic, haunted by the memory of his lost love. His companions, though getting much less of the limelight, are also complex, well-drawn characters with believable motivations, though some are decidedly less sympathetic than Will.
The historical setting is well-drawn, with enough detail to satisfy the Elizabethan buffs amongst us without slowing down the action. The filthiness and smelliness of London is sometimes laid on a little heavily, but it does provide a contrast with the elegant, blossom-fragrant citadels of Spain.
I have only a few small quibbles, mostly the nitpicking of a fellow writer that will probably go unnoticed by other readers. There are a few places where information is repeated, or spelt out in narrative immediately after it has been explained in dialogue. And in one scene, Will somehow manages to hold a rapier to a bad guy’s throat and simultaneously whisper in his ear – pretty impressive with a blade that was normally around 36-40 inches! (I assume he is using the tip, since rapiers were not terribly sharp near the hilt). My attention did start to drift a little during the sea-battle, but that sort of thing is always hard to do in a novel. It wasn’t badly written – quite the contrary – but every time the action shifted away from Will towards ships in combat, I just wanted to skip ahead to the next bit of derring-do :)
I was also a little disappointed that the Enemy resorted to mundane physical torture, when they are so good at the psychological kind, but I guess it had to be clear that they were capable of inflicting horrible torments on those Will cares about. On the other hand, kudos to Chadbourn for writing torture scenes that didn’t give me nightmares. He sensibly focuses on the interrogation that is the point of the scene, rather than gratuitous descriptions of the torture itself. Books being so much more intimate a medium than film, it takes very little to make a strong impact on the engaged reader.
In summary, this is an entertaining page-turner with strong, sympathetic characters and a fascinating, terrifying setting – what more could one want from a fantasy novel? I for one am eagerly looking forward to reading more of Will’s adventures…
gavreads's review
Mark Chadbourn is back with a new publisher, new editor and a new storyline. After completing a trilogies of trilogies (The Age of Misrule, The Dark Ages, Kingdom of Spiders) which focus on the present at a moment when magic reappears in the land and a group of heroes called the ‘brothers and sisters of dragons’ are brought together to protect us from ancient and evil forces. The Swords of Albion shows us that even though the sequence is complete the battle never ends.
1588: The London of Elizabeth I is rocked by news of a daring raid on the Tower. The truth is known only to a select few: that, for twenty years, a legendary doomsday device, its power fabled for millennia, has been kept secret and, until now at least, safe in the Tower. But it has been stolen and Walsingham’s spies believe it has been taken by the ‘Enemy’.
And so it falls to Will Swyfte – swordsman, adventurer, scholar, rake, and the greatest of Walsingham’s new breed of spy – to follow a trail of murder and devilry that leads deep into the dark, venomous world of the Faerie. As Philip of Spain prepares a naval assault on England, Will is caught up in a race against time in pursuit of this fiendish device…
Will Swyfte made a brief appearance in Jack of Ravens but it might not be the same Will Swyfte. Chadbourn enjoys playing with time and with the very basis of humanity and our reactions and interactions with each other.
England’s greatest spy (who if he was alive now would doubtless have his own cartoon series, comic book, and clothing line!) doesn’t just fight the Spanish – even though they are a threat to Queen Elizabeth and England they do not represent the true enemy and this is where the thrust of Chadbourn’s trilogy of trilogies comes together in this new story. However, with so many layers of myth heaped upon the ‘brothers and sister of the dragons’ there is sometimes slow movement in terms of action in those books.
Not so with Swyfte’s tale. He is an all out Elizabethan action hero. No time for debating the wonder of the cosmos here. This is a man with a mission. He has to rescue what has been stolen and we breathlessly follow Will for most of this tale as he pursues the Enemy across England all the way to Spain and back again.
I guess the problem for me is that Chadbourn’s skill isn’t necessarily in action but rather in the moments of connection between characters. And those moments seem few and far between in the Swords of Albion. Our action-hero protagonist always has to be doing something. We follow him as he runs across rooftops, hides amongst shadows and impersonates people on sailing ships.
But for all those action sequences, and there are lots to choose from, they feel slightly too pared down, like there isn’t enough space to follow who is stabbing who or what is being set fire to by whom.The other problem is that there isn’t much time for Chadbourn’s characters to grow. We find out more about them and their motivations and some of these are quite shocking, but the characters almost all come away as similar, albeit more familiar, as when we first met them.
And for a writer that has for so long been a champion of consequences, it feels odd not to have more cause and effect on an individual level, though it is certainly present on a grander scale. The door is left wide open for the next in the sequence.
As a long term readers of Chadbourn’s work, there is a huge shift needed as Swyfte is very different from Chadbourn’s other heroes. He is darker and goes above and beyond the level where the ‘dragons’ would have stopped.
So we have a new Chadbourn, new-ish characters, and a new way of storytelling. New readers have nothing to fear here. This a perfect jumping on point. The nature of the Enemy is revealed in enough detail, although old readers will have a greater understanding of the Enemy’s nature and role.
They will be seeing a different side to Chadbourn than has previously been on display. I’m hoping that the next book will add more depth to the detail, so it doesn’t feel as if all the action is whizzing past in a blur.
Chadbourn deftly mixes period feel and modern day, with Swifte gaining a touch of James Bond and Dee getting a touch of Q. He gets the tone and balance just right. I can’t think of any real moments where I was drawn out of the story to question a detail or the tone or feel of the period. It felt convincing that these events could be happening in this way to these characters.
For a change of style Chadbourn has managed to break away from his earlier work, infusing it with some fresh air. Unfortunately , as I mentioned earlier, it feels that he’s taken the work slightly too far into ‘action’ away from his strengths at delving deeper and peeling away what is seen from what is not.
At this point I’m undecided. I’m hoping that Chadbourn can find a rhythm in the next book, a balance between the depth he’s gone into previously while not speeding along so fast that moments are lost.
He redeems himself in the end, pulling off a moment of brilliance in the revelation of a secret that puts a completely different spin on events. And thus he has left me wanting more.
1588: The London of Elizabeth I is rocked by news of a daring raid on the Tower. The truth is known only to a select few: that, for twenty years, a legendary doomsday device, its power fabled for millennia, has been kept secret and, until now at least, safe in the Tower. But it has been stolen and Walsingham’s spies believe it has been taken by the ‘Enemy’.
And so it falls to Will Swyfte – swordsman, adventurer, scholar, rake, and the greatest of Walsingham’s new breed of spy – to follow a trail of murder and devilry that leads deep into the dark, venomous world of the Faerie. As Philip of Spain prepares a naval assault on England, Will is caught up in a race against time in pursuit of this fiendish device…
Will Swyfte made a brief appearance in Jack of Ravens but it might not be the same Will Swyfte. Chadbourn enjoys playing with time and with the very basis of humanity and our reactions and interactions with each other.
England’s greatest spy (who if he was alive now would doubtless have his own cartoon series, comic book, and clothing line!) doesn’t just fight the Spanish – even though they are a threat to Queen Elizabeth and England they do not represent the true enemy and this is where the thrust of Chadbourn’s trilogy of trilogies comes together in this new story. However, with so many layers of myth heaped upon the ‘brothers and sister of the dragons’ there is sometimes slow movement in terms of action in those books.
Not so with Swyfte’s tale. He is an all out Elizabethan action hero. No time for debating the wonder of the cosmos here. This is a man with a mission. He has to rescue what has been stolen and we breathlessly follow Will for most of this tale as he pursues the Enemy across England all the way to Spain and back again.
I guess the problem for me is that Chadbourn’s skill isn’t necessarily in action but rather in the moments of connection between characters. And those moments seem few and far between in the Swords of Albion. Our action-hero protagonist always has to be doing something. We follow him as he runs across rooftops, hides amongst shadows and impersonates people on sailing ships.
But for all those action sequences, and there are lots to choose from, they feel slightly too pared down, like there isn’t enough space to follow who is stabbing who or what is being set fire to by whom.The other problem is that there isn’t much time for Chadbourn’s characters to grow. We find out more about them and their motivations and some of these are quite shocking, but the characters almost all come away as similar, albeit more familiar, as when we first met them.
And for a writer that has for so long been a champion of consequences, it feels odd not to have more cause and effect on an individual level, though it is certainly present on a grander scale. The door is left wide open for the next in the sequence.
As a long term readers of Chadbourn’s work, there is a huge shift needed as Swyfte is very different from Chadbourn’s other heroes. He is darker and goes above and beyond the level where the ‘dragons’ would have stopped.
So we have a new Chadbourn, new-ish characters, and a new way of storytelling. New readers have nothing to fear here. This a perfect jumping on point. The nature of the Enemy is revealed in enough detail, although old readers will have a greater understanding of the Enemy’s nature and role.
They will be seeing a different side to Chadbourn than has previously been on display. I’m hoping that the next book will add more depth to the detail, so it doesn’t feel as if all the action is whizzing past in a blur.
Chadbourn deftly mixes period feel and modern day, with Swifte gaining a touch of James Bond and Dee getting a touch of Q. He gets the tone and balance just right. I can’t think of any real moments where I was drawn out of the story to question a detail or the tone or feel of the period. It felt convincing that these events could be happening in this way to these characters.
For a change of style Chadbourn has managed to break away from his earlier work, infusing it with some fresh air. Unfortunately , as I mentioned earlier, it feels that he’s taken the work slightly too far into ‘action’ away from his strengths at delving deeper and peeling away what is seen from what is not.
At this point I’m undecided. I’m hoping that Chadbourn can find a rhythm in the next book, a balance between the depth he’s gone into previously while not speeding along so fast that moments are lost.
He redeems himself in the end, pulling off a moment of brilliance in the revelation of a secret that puts a completely different spin on events. And thus he has left me wanting more.
markyon's review
4.0
It takes a special kind of book these days for a jaded reviewer like myself to make specific time for – ignore the family, go to bed early, that sort of thing.
And having read a few of these with a similar theme over the last couple of years – Marie Brennan’s Midnight Never Come, Dan Abnett’s Triumff, for example – you might expect this one as a result to move down the ‘to be read’ pile a fair way.
However, this is perhaps the best of those books mentioned and a great read that I read much faster than I thought I would.
It is, in essence, a romp, a fast-paced Elizabethan tale of the antics of one Will Swyfte, a whirling dervish of a James-Bondian type hero, whose job (after drinking and entertaining women) is to defend the mighty realm of Elizabethan England in 1588 against the might of an unseen enemy, the Fae. The theft of a man wearing a silver mask from the Tower of London has implications for Will. For this is no simple mask, it is a relic from which the Seelie (Unseen) world hopes to bring down the Elizabethan Empire. Will is further sent to discover two more items of value which would work with the mask: a shield, hidden in Edinburgh and a sword.
Much of the book is spent acquiring those objects, entering lost chambers and uncovering secrets , all the time competing against the Fae.
What with that and shielding England from the impending threat of the Spanish, Will is a busy man.
Where this one scores is that the tale is told with enough pace not to get bogged down with political and historical detail, nor too humorous to disengage readers from the gravitas of the plot. There is a real sense of menace and evil here, which Mark uses with full relish. Parts of it are most unpleasant. Will is also a character with a bit of depth and not always as clear cut as the reader would perhaps expect him to be.
As well as Will, there are a great number of background characters which fill out the picture, all of which show other aspects of themselves and Will. Nat is Will’s mentee; initially unknowing of the supernatural dangers they fight but loyal throughout, regardless. Grace is his loyal girl friend, bonded not only by her love of Will but also through the disappearance years ago of Will’s first love and Grace’s sister.
There are also a sprinking of real characters in all of this: from Elizabeth I’s spymaster Lord Walsingham to alchemist Doctor John Dee, from King Philip II of Spain to friend Christopher Marlowe, these together with their fictional counterparts make an enthralling tale. Think Elizabeth with added fantasy horror. As with his previous novels, Mark manages to convincingly mix traditional English folklore with a series of fast-paced set-pieces that keep those pages turning.
There are issues – I’m not sure that a man so famous could work effectively as a spy, as Will does, for example (though this is something Mark himself addresses in the book), and I did laugh at the concept of Will as an Elizabethan celebrity. I also had a wry smile at the improbability of characters being named Will and Grace. Nonetheless, the book moves at such a pace that such minor distraction is not always noticed.
This is one of the best historical magick books I have read for a long time. Not as bogged down with detail as some, nor as frivolous as others, it nonetheless a speedy jaunt through a time of English history that is as entertaining as you might expect. Recommended.
And having read a few of these with a similar theme over the last couple of years – Marie Brennan’s Midnight Never Come, Dan Abnett’s Triumff, for example – you might expect this one as a result to move down the ‘to be read’ pile a fair way.
However, this is perhaps the best of those books mentioned and a great read that I read much faster than I thought I would.
It is, in essence, a romp, a fast-paced Elizabethan tale of the antics of one Will Swyfte, a whirling dervish of a James-Bondian type hero, whose job (after drinking and entertaining women) is to defend the mighty realm of Elizabethan England in 1588 against the might of an unseen enemy, the Fae. The theft of a man wearing a silver mask from the Tower of London has implications for Will. For this is no simple mask, it is a relic from which the Seelie (Unseen) world hopes to bring down the Elizabethan Empire. Will is further sent to discover two more items of value which would work with the mask: a shield, hidden in Edinburgh and a sword.
Much of the book is spent acquiring those objects, entering lost chambers and uncovering secrets , all the time competing against the Fae.
What with that and shielding England from the impending threat of the Spanish, Will is a busy man.
Where this one scores is that the tale is told with enough pace not to get bogged down with political and historical detail, nor too humorous to disengage readers from the gravitas of the plot. There is a real sense of menace and evil here, which Mark uses with full relish. Parts of it are most unpleasant. Will is also a character with a bit of depth and not always as clear cut as the reader would perhaps expect him to be.
As well as Will, there are a great number of background characters which fill out the picture, all of which show other aspects of themselves and Will. Nat is Will’s mentee; initially unknowing of the supernatural dangers they fight but loyal throughout, regardless. Grace is his loyal girl friend, bonded not only by her love of Will but also through the disappearance years ago of Will’s first love and Grace’s sister.
There are also a sprinking of real characters in all of this: from Elizabeth I’s spymaster Lord Walsingham to alchemist Doctor John Dee, from King Philip II of Spain to friend Christopher Marlowe, these together with their fictional counterparts make an enthralling tale. Think Elizabeth with added fantasy horror. As with his previous novels, Mark manages to convincingly mix traditional English folklore with a series of fast-paced set-pieces that keep those pages turning.
There are issues – I’m not sure that a man so famous could work effectively as a spy, as Will does, for example (though this is something Mark himself addresses in the book), and I did laugh at the concept of Will as an Elizabethan celebrity. I also had a wry smile at the improbability of characters being named Will and Grace. Nonetheless, the book moves at such a pace that such minor distraction is not always noticed.
This is one of the best historical magick books I have read for a long time. Not as bogged down with detail as some, nor as frivolous as others, it nonetheless a speedy jaunt through a time of English history that is as entertaining as you might expect. Recommended.
arienne311's review
2.0
A mix between James Bond, Indiana Jones and Assassin's Creed. Literally, because you can pinpoint several scenes 'inspired' (aka blatantly stolen) by scenes from these francises. I didn't feel any originality within this book. Still two stars, because the only redeeming quality for me was the relationship between Will and Nathaniel, which was believable and well described.
cupiscent's review
2.0
James Bond versus the Fae in Elizabethan England. But I was really quite disappointed with the delivery. Our hero is sort of tedious, never really bogged down in his emotions, and often making phenomenally stupid decisions. There are long sequences of action that don't really carry emotive resonance (and they could, were Will Swyfte more deeply plumbed) and when he does wrestle with a moral dilemma he sort of comes across as weak. The writing is rather pedestrian, tending to clunky and repetitive sentences festooned with high-drama - and there were at least two glitches of the "nearly but not quite the word you were looking for" variety. (Ships founder, they don't flounder. Well, they might, but not the way you mean.)
It's entirely possible I only finished this because at the times when I really went, "...but I don't care!" I was either stuck on a train with half an hour between here and home, or I was within a hundred pages of the end. (Yes, I didn't care within a hundred pages of the end. That level of general disinterest.) And part of my irritation is that I feel that this really could have been a thoroughly entertaining book, but all of the elements were under-utilised. The ruthlessness and emotional trauma of the spies was in some ways over- and in some ways under-played (Swyfte's woe-is-me ruminations on the spy's lot were often trite). Some big plot comes out at the end when it would have been used throughout. And don't even get me started on the fact that all the Fae are unremittingly evil despite the mentions of "helper" or good faeries. Lack of ambiguity often makes me pull a face, but especially when you're dealing with folk who would probably be found pressed between the dictionary pages at the entry for "ambiguous".
In short: meh.
It's entirely possible I only finished this because at the times when I really went, "...but I don't care!" I was either stuck on a train with half an hour between here and home, or I was within a hundred pages of the end. (Yes, I didn't care within a hundred pages of the end. That level of general disinterest.) And part of my irritation is that I feel that this really could have been a thoroughly entertaining book, but all of the elements were under-utilised. The ruthlessness and emotional trauma of the spies was in some ways over- and in some ways under-played (Swyfte's woe-is-me ruminations on the spy's lot were often trite). Some big plot comes out at the end when it would have been used throughout. And don't even get me started on the fact that all the Fae are unremittingly evil despite the mentions of "helper" or good faeries. Lack of ambiguity often makes me pull a face, but especially when you're dealing with folk who would probably be found pressed between the dictionary pages at the entry for "ambiguous".
In short: meh.
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