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A review by nghia
The Ill-Made Knight by Christian Cameron
3.0
The Ill-Made Knight is a heavily-fictionalized take on the early years in the career of William Gold, a English man-at-arms who dreams of being a proper knight, from 1356-1364. That takes him from age 14 up to age 22 and covers the end of the Hundred Years' War between England and France -- William's first battle is at Poitiers -- to the beginning years of the great condottieri in Italy.
The biggest problem Cameron has is that a real life biography is messy and simply isn't going to have the story beats we've come to expect. There aren't really any nemeses (the Bourc Camus is a half-hearted attempt at one but he simply disappears from the last 1/3rd of the book) or narrative arcs. William Gold's sole goal in life is to become a proper knight but he has no actual plan on how to do that; he spends most of the quite long book bouncing around from one mercenary company to another, usually on the wrong side of the thin line between mercenary and outright bandit.
This has the consequence that the book doesn't feel like it is ever building towards anything. It is just "one thing after another". That is just like real life but it did make the reading drag for me. (And there are three more books in the series!) There was a point when William was in Yet Another Battle and I realized I was at the 90% mark on the book. "Huh, guess it is going to end soon somehow." And the ending is, indeed anti-climactic.
While reading this, I realized it is the very definition of a "boys adventure". There is essentially no inner life to anyone. It is just action action action action. There are even a few passages that hint at something else, things like:
But...none of that is shown to us. What did he actually learn? How did he learn it? One gets the impression that he feels his audience would get bored if he included anything like that. Towards the end, the book improves slightly on this front by giving a love interest with Emile, a stronger emphasis on his fall/redemption and struggle to be a true knight and not just a bandit, and a return to (sort of) faith. But these are all very underdone and largely feel like too little, too late after the numbing monotony of battles that came before.
Finally, there were a few parts that left me confused because the author would have things happen that seemed to contradict previous developments with William Gold. Quite early on we are told
But not too long after that he runs into Sir John Hawkwood again
When he's all of, I dunno, 16 or 18 or so? He claims he is confident (and others agree with him) he can beat the Bourc Camus. But when he's 21 he's saying
and talking about how easily bested he is by Boucicault, who defeats him without breaking a sweat. After being a seasoned campaigner for a half-decade, he's being taught how to light a fire properly by Fra Peter. I just had a hard time reconciling it.
The Ill-Made Knight isn't terrible but I'm not sure I'm ready to read another 1,500 pages of the same.
The biggest problem Cameron has is that a real life biography is messy and simply isn't going to have the story beats we've come to expect. There aren't really any nemeses (the Bourc Camus is a half-hearted attempt at one but he simply disappears from the last 1/3rd of the book) or narrative arcs. William Gold's sole goal in life is to become a proper knight but he has no actual plan on how to do that; he spends most of the quite long book bouncing around from one mercenary company to another, usually on the wrong side of the thin line between mercenary and outright bandit.
This has the consequence that the book doesn't feel like it is ever building towards anything. It is just "one thing after another". That is just like real life but it did make the reading drag for me. (And there are three more books in the series!) There was a point when William was in Yet Another Battle and I realized I was at the 90% mark on the book. "Huh, guess it is going to end soon somehow." And the ending is, indeed anti-climactic.
While reading this, I realized it is the very definition of a "boys adventure". There is essentially no inner life to anyone. It is just action action action action. There are even a few passages that hint at something else, things like:
From her I learned what Emile might have taught me of courtly love – about how love can make you a better knight.
But...none of that is shown to us. What did he actually learn? How did he learn it? One gets the impression that he feels his audience would get bored if he included anything like that. Towards the end, the book improves slightly on this front by giving a love interest with Emile, a stronger emphasis on his fall/redemption and struggle to be a true knight and not just a bandit, and a return to (sort of) faith. But these are all very underdone and largely feel like too little, too late after the numbing monotony of battles that came before.
Finally, there were a few parts that left me confused because the author would have things happen that seemed to contradict previous developments with William Gold. Quite early on we are told
"One man – Sir John Hawkwood – says you are wise beyond your years."
But not too long after that he runs into Sir John Hawkwood again
Hawkwood looked at me, as if seeing me for the first time. "So, there is something inside that head besides empty chivalry."
When he's all of, I dunno, 16 or 18 or so? He claims he is confident (and others agree with him) he can beat the Bourc Camus. But when he's 21 he's saying
I really didn’t understand, then, how great was the divide between the competent man-at-arms and the trained man-at-arms.
and talking about how easily bested he is by Boucicault, who defeats him without breaking a sweat. After being a seasoned campaigner for a half-decade, he's being taught how to light a fire properly by Fra Peter. I just had a hard time reconciling it.
The Ill-Made Knight isn't terrible but I'm not sure I'm ready to read another 1,500 pages of the same.