Charlemagne's Champion by Gail Van Asten

Roland, witch-born and a bastards besides, is an outcast among the young noblemen training for Charlemagne's court. Terrified of his supernatural heritage, he single-mindedly and almost perversely works in the service of the king, hoping his sacrifices for Christendom will save his soul.

Standing between Roland and the king is Lord Ganelon, King's Champion. Lord Ganelon is jealous of the king and loathes Roland, for he knows a secret: Roland is the offspring of none-other than Charlemagne and Charlemagne's sister!

(That's right, folks. Incest as a plot point ... again. Seriously, I'm getting sick of this.)

Ganelon uses his position as master of the young noblemen in training to subtly ruin Roland's training and relationship with his peers. As Charlemagne begins to show interest in Roland and attempts to raise him above his station as a witch-got bastard, Ganelon's loathing becomes pathological. He will see Roland doomed.

With a nice blanket and a hot cup of hojicha (tea), hammock season can be stretched into winter. Well, until tomorrow’s snow storm, anyway.

It's weird to read a book where there's almost no one tolerable. Roland isn't even an anti-hero. He's not likable despite his flaws or someone you root for even though you're not sure why. He's cruel, proud, headstrong, desperate for glory but contemptuous of everyone sans the king. Don't believe me? He shrugs as literal babies are bashed to death against a building, confused why others find the act distasteful. It's war; bad things are necessary in war.

Some might be sympathetic due to his past. I wasn’t. He felt very familiar to me: the sort of man you must be very careful to turn down for a date because he is filled with rage and looking for an outlet.

This example is appropriate because Roland is a raging misogynist, even by the standards of 700AD. It's also funny because he would never ask a woman on a date. Roland is akin to the modern-day "Men Going Their Own Way" group. Ie, he's a gender separatist and wants nothing to do with women, ever. Not because he's asexual or gay; early in the novel, it's made clear he lusts after women's bodies. No, it's because women are all temptresses, villainous whores, and untrustworthy witches. Better to live celibate than entangle with such treacherous creatures.

So, as I said, everyone is awful and cruel, and the plot is mostly "everyone is awful and cruel, but maybe Roland will be able to thrive despite this due to his skill at killing."

My utterly subjective hot-take is that story, plot, and characterization were sacrificed or forgotten for the sake of "tension." I don't love easy tension, but I try to review books against what they're trying to achieve rather than my ideal book, and I can't discount Van Asten on this one. There was teeth-grating tension aplenty.

Less subjective is my take on the technical writing.

Charlemagne's Champion opens with so much repetition: the king rides to the top of the hill, where his horse is winded from riding to the top of the hill. Then, atop the hill, he waits and watches as his lords gain the hill behind him. On the summit of the hill, they converse before he dashes away from them, down the opposite side of the hill. The lords sit there on the hill, shocked at his behavior.

Is it the worst thing ever? No. Does the repetition add anything other than a bunch of words? No. Does it read like the author spit these first couple pages out over a weekend and then never revisited them in earnest? Yes.

Perhaps it was a fluke, I said to myself, a last-minute addition that didn't get the luxury of multiple editing sweeps. Stranger things have happened.

But the stupid technical problems continued. One sentence offered two point-of-views. There were always an endless string of prepositional phrases and bits of information that weren't necessary ("the king stood on the stairs of the castle near the back entrance at the place where the West wing and the East wing touched and watched the lords sparring").

And then, there was this monstrosity:

"Slowly, with concentrated effort, [Roland] walked across the inner bailey toward the stables where he quartered himself.

Oliver, reaching the corner that lead to the tower of the keep where his chamber was located, responded to an urge to stop and look back. [Roland] still stood there. Alone... He watched the boy walk slowly across the bailey.

From the first paragraph to the second, we jump perspectives. The first is from Roland's; the second is from Oliver’s. I don't love a fluid POV, but that's not a deal-breaker. You also see an example of all the extraneous prepositional phrases and asides. However, the real problem is that we go back in time when we shift to Oliver's POV. In Roland's sentence, he crosses the bailey. Oliver's POV starts with Roland still standing in the bailey.

Sometimes, breaking the rules adds something to a scene, highlights something jarring or critical. This is not one of those moments. It's, at absolute best, first-draft material, where you say to yourself, "I should figure out whose POV this should be covered in ... I'll get back to it."

If you've read many of my reviews, you know these sorts of sloppy problems bother me enough to make me quit reading. Countless closely-grouped technical issues appear as if the author didn't care enough about their book to edit it properly. And if they don't care enough to put that extra time in, why should I suspect that the rest of the novel is well-written, well-thought-out, and worth my time?

It's been said that my reviews can be a little exacting. I don't disagree that I'm after brilliant obscure vintage sci-fi and fantasy, and about as blunt as a brick to the head when I feel like a book falls dramatically short.

Similarly, I agree that I'm far pickier about grammar and writing structure than the average reader. I almost wish I weren't, but I've edited so many manuscripts that obvious missteps practically stand out in red text.

But the comments about my being too demanding echoed in my head and got me thinking. I take a bevy of these sloppy mistakes as "bad omens," as it were—but how do I know for sure unless I finish one of these novels? Take The Wizard's Shadow. The missteps in storytelling didn't negate the merit of the story it was telling. Perhaps missteps in technical writing wouldn't—and shouldn’t—be the end of Charlemagne's Champion.

Things almost immediately picked up. A supernatural element touched the story in the form of a snowy owl seemingly keeping an eye on Roland, even on travels of hundreds of miles. When the owl disappears, but Roland meets a priest with wide, dark eyes and snow-white robes, I had to know the connection.

And then there is the mysterious sword that appeared as if meant for Roland's hand: Durandal. Dark as night, and with a handle in the shape of a comely woman, others pain if they try to wield it. The dark woman of the handle is occasionally said to look hateful or suddenly cunning. This further intrigued me; the sword is fascinatingly more than a sword. 

These supernatural elements were (finally!) paired with the regular appearance of a likable character.

Lord Oliver de Montglave is kind to everyone, even Roland. Not just when others are watching, or when Roland is on his best behavior, either. He's kind to Roland, full stop. It becomes clear that their destinies are somehow intertwined.

I started to "trust" the novel around this time. We have a kind character chipping away at Roland's worst qualities—hinting at a redemption arc—and a touch of supernatural every few chapters to keep me guessing. 

The plot of Charlemagne's Champion is mostly Roland fighting the Lombards, fighting the Saxons and the Vikings, or fighting the Moors*. There's little to his storyline other than his service to Charlemagne, his stark fear over women, and—after so many pages of malice toward him—an eventual friendship with Lord Oliver that became so intense it rivaled the bro-love of Nancy Springer's Madbond series.

It all looked like it worked, though. Somehow this was all going to tie together; was the supernatural trying to help Charlemagne's bid to unify the continent under "The One True God" or the opposite? Or was the supernatural trying to peel Roland away from Charlemange and get him to accept the birthright of his witchy powers that he foreswore so many years prior? And was Oliver there to save Roland? I had to know.

I was already penning my concession speech in my head: "dear reviewers of my reviews. You're right. I've been too harsh in my critiques..."

Then, on page 192 of 295, I knew I would finish Charlemagne's Champion dissatisfied.

While Roland sleeps, Durandal the sword sprouts legs, transforms into a proper woman, and goes on a bit of a walkabout, but returns to sword-form before Roland wakes up.

First off, we're 65% of the way through the book. It's a little late for the introduction of significant supernatural events. This is several factors "more" than updates about Durandal's facial expressions or hints that there's a connection between the owl and the priest.

If this is a legitimately magical world, where dramatic supernatural events can happen that will impact the plot, we need to see that sooner. Like, common advice would be within the first two or three chapters. Otherwise, it feels contrived, convenient, an author having written themselves into a corner and grabbing the impossible so they don't have to, ahem, edit their story to find a logical progression.

I mean, say I'm overly critical all you want, but few things are more universally considered damning in a book/movie review than the term "deus ex machina."

But, okay, the sword is maybe a literal woman, perhaps a witch or something. Sure, it's sudden, but how did I know that it meant I wouldn't get a resolution for what most intrigued me: the intersection of the supernatural and Roland's service of Charlemagne?

Easy. If there were a solid plan for the supernatural elements, that scene wouldn't have come out of left-field. It would have felt like an unpredictable and yet somehow inevitable continuation of the supernatural storyline. Instead, I felt like I were reading an entirely different novel.

So when I finished the book and had no freaking idea what the sword, owl, and priest had to do with anything, I wasn't surprised. I could see the usefulness of having them as characters—to ensure the plot stayed within the bounds the author wanted—but the motive or intended outcomes of those supernatural creatures? Mostly lacking, and what is knowable has nothing to do with the primary plot. It's a couple-page, poorly fleshed out diversion.

I closed Charlemagne's Champion disappointed, but confident in my "bad omens." Even on nit-picky things, repeated lack of care seems to be a reasonable metric to expect a general lack of care. 

This is a brutal review, to be sure, but I feel compelled to reiterate that had the supernatural elements come together in a satisfying way at the end, this review would have been the concession speech I was planning in my head. I think this is one of the fundamental difficulties with stories featuring an unlikable protagonist. If the plot doesn’t wrap up in a satisfying way, no amount of decent—or even good—writing will save it. And Charlemagne’s Champion did read well during the middle parts of the book, but it absolutely needed a strong ending to uphold that value.

If Gail Van Asten’s other books feature more likable protagonists, I’d be interested in giving them a try.

*So, uh, as you might expect, the depiction of the Moors is not particularly kind. I'd give this a pass if the POVs were exclusively of those from Charlemagne's lands—it'd be unreasonable to expect them to have an unbiased view of their enemies. We do get Moor POVs, though, and these uphold the values Charlemagne's ilk ascribe to them. They're cunning and treacherous and proud of their treachery. You get the idea.

I know historical-inspired fantasy often uses the Moors as the primary, and entirely corrupt, enemy. This smacks of subconscious racism to me. There were other enemy groups of different backgrounds and different religions and a penchant for warfare ... and yet they're never so vilified as the Moors.

Cover art by Keith Parkinson: