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Banners of Blood #1
Son of the Morning
Lauded by fellow authors, a five star 'SFX recommends' title, adored by the bloggers, Mark Alder's debut novel of angels, demons, kings and the Hundred Years War marks the beginning of a hugely exciting new series.
Edward III stands in a burnt English church, destroyed in a French raid. A raid on his land, a raid on him. He is in debt and surrounded by doubters, only victory against France will save his throne.
But Philip of Valois can put 50,000 men in the field. He has sent his priests to summon the very angels themselves to fight for France. Edward could call on God for aid but he is a usurper. What if God truly is on the side of the French?
But for a price, Edward could open the gates of Hell and take an unholy war to France ...
Mark Alder has brought the epic fantasy of George R.R. Martin to the vivid historical adventure of Bernard Cornwell and has a created a fantasy that will sweep you to a new vision of the Hundred Years War.
Edward III stands in a burnt English church, destroyed in a French raid. A raid on his land, a raid on him. He is in debt and surrounded by doubters, only victory against France will save his throne.
But Philip of Valois can put 50,000 men in the field. He has sent his priests to summon the very angels themselves to fight for France. Edward could call on God for aid but he is a usurper. What if God truly is on the side of the French?
But for a price, Edward could open the gates of Hell and take an unholy war to France ...
Mark Alder has brought the epic fantasy of George R.R. Martin to the vivid historical adventure of Bernard Cornwell and has a created a fantasy that will sweep you to a new vision of the Hundred Years War.
752 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2013
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3042 people want to read
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August 3, 2025"A kestrel, silver in the dusk, turned the world around its wing. A beat, a flutter, a sudden and momentary fury. It tumbled, stopped, and hovered almost motionless, its wings wide, possessing the land."
So Mark Alder knows how to spin a sentence, there's great prose in this book...
A book which I've been reading for approaching three months. The two big reasons for Son of the Morning taking up my reading time for so many weeks are i) it's a very long book ii) I'm a chronically slow reader.
This is a good book, you should try it. I'm conflicted though. It starts off brilliantly and, for me, trails downhill for its duration. Fortunately the gradient is shallow enough that despite its length it's still a decent read by the end, and overall a good book with many things to recommend it.
I'll list some reasons I shouldn't have liked it:
- the characters... I don't need likable characters and that's good because I found only two of them even vaguely likable, but none of them truly fascinated me either, which is a drawback.
- the length, it really did feel as though this book could have been cut in half and still have done the job.
And some of the reasons I did like it:
- the prose.
- the historical world building, Alder does a great job of capturing the feel of the period and place(mid 1300s, England & France)
- the magical world building. The mythology devised around Lucifer and God, combined with the angels, devils and demons is all well done and initially fascinating.
- the characters, whilst not fully engaging me on a personal level certainly fill their roles in the complex plot.
What I liked:
- the start of the book where mystery and possibility are built and built
What I didn't like so much:
- the closing third where the angels and devils that started as rare and mysterious begin crowding the pages to such a degree that the character of the book seems to change and the human aspects become overshadowed.
In the end, I remain conflicted. Mark Alder writes very well, the book sits on a fascinating idea and the setting/period are expertly drawn. The story is perhaps over-long, over-complex, and with the steady ramping up of the magical elements it changes character significantly so that the type of tale you're reading changes quite significantly.
Strangely (for someone who likes action) I enjoyed the first half the most, and for the first three hundred pages you don't see a battle or an angel in action and there's little to get the pulse racing ... but even so it's a great read - which says a lot.
Give this a read. It's certainly inspired me to seek out some more of the author's work.
Join my Patreon
Join my 3-emails-a-year newsletter #prizes
...
So Mark Alder knows how to spin a sentence, there's great prose in this book...
A book which I've been reading for approaching three months. The two big reasons for Son of the Morning taking up my reading time for so many weeks are i) it's a very long book ii) I'm a chronically slow reader.
This is a good book, you should try it. I'm conflicted though. It starts off brilliantly and, for me, trails downhill for its duration. Fortunately the gradient is shallow enough that despite its length it's still a decent read by the end, and overall a good book with many things to recommend it.
I'll list some reasons I shouldn't have liked it:
- the characters... I don't need likable characters and that's good because I found only two of them even vaguely likable, but none of them truly fascinated me either, which is a drawback.
- the length, it really did feel as though this book could have been cut in half and still have done the job.
And some of the reasons I did like it:
- the prose.
- the historical world building, Alder does a great job of capturing the feel of the period and place(mid 1300s, England & France)
- the magical world building. The mythology devised around Lucifer and God, combined with the angels, devils and demons is all well done and initially fascinating.
- the characters, whilst not fully engaging me on a personal level certainly fill their roles in the complex plot.
What I liked:
- the start of the book where mystery and possibility are built and built
What I didn't like so much:
- the closing third where the angels and devils that started as rare and mysterious begin crowding the pages to such a degree that the character of the book seems to change and the human aspects become overshadowed.
In the end, I remain conflicted. Mark Alder writes very well, the book sits on a fascinating idea and the setting/period are expertly drawn. The story is perhaps over-long, over-complex, and with the steady ramping up of the magical elements it changes character significantly so that the type of tale you're reading changes quite significantly.
Strangely (for someone who likes action) I enjoyed the first half the most, and for the first three hundred pages you don't see a battle or an angel in action and there's little to get the pulse racing ... but even so it's a great read - which says a lot.
Give this a read. It's certainly inspired me to seek out some more of the author's work.
Join my Patreon
Join my 3-emails-a-year newsletter #prizes
...
June 22, 2020
This book was a disappointment. I started to read the story in earnest, because I was thrilled at the idea of fantasy set in one of my favorite historical periods, the XIV century. From the blurb I expected a solid, complex plot, plenty of intrigue, captivating characters, bloody battles, charming worldbuilding and evocative descriptions. I am familiar with several aspects and characters of the Hundred Years’ War so I was excited at the prospect of Heaven, Hell and all its denizens meshing with the political and military strife of such a well-known background.
The story is indeed complex and it features a sizable cast of characters, there are different plotlines with a overarching trend and the prologue is very intriguing (sadly also the last you see of setting development). Maybe I was expecting too much, but the book fell short on several fronts.
The main flaw is that it is a plot-heavy book with flat characters.
The antagonists are duly evil and the protagonists seriously ambiguous, only two of them are vaguely decent persons. Very fine, I can come to care for unsympathetic scoundrels and I’m always eager to read about labyrinthine personalities and grey moralities, to search for hidden motives behind the obvious and guess at the redeeming potentials. Sadly I didn’t have to dig at all because there was little or none character growth. Most of them felt like they were following a set script in order to shoehorn the plot into preordained situations, often turning out shallow and inconsistent; there are children who act as adults, clever people who remain flinty in their courses of action when anyone else would start to reconsider and hard guys who have too sudden changes of heart. As a result, I failed to connect with any of the characters and none truly fascinated me either, which is also a drawback.
If nothing else I wished I could despise some of them, but how can you find rebarbative villains so foolishly evil or protagonists so obsessively monothematic?
Another consequence of this lack of roundness is that all the characters have to often explain how they feel and their actions to involve the reader (unfortunately in a very repetitive manner: Montagu mooning over Isabella for the nth time and illustrating yet again the motivations of his dilemma, or Edward imparting the same lesson in war finances, the divine right of kings and how harrowing his choices are, again and again…). The elucidations supplied for some of the most brow-raising behaviors simply reinforced my difficulty to feel emotionally engaged. Conversely, there is no overabundance of details as to how their intuitions come about, or about the mystique of the otherwordly or the unfolding agendas of the many factions involved.
One-dimensional characters are a killjoy in tale with serious themes, but I can accept plot over characterization if there is a captivating story and a very structured design. Undoubtedly this book has many interesting ideas and subplots, there are battles and skirmishes, mysteries, opposed interests, a touch of Sleeping Beauty (complete with briar roses), danbrownesque conspiracies, different POVs, intricate quests, the kings’ sport and a lot of upheaval in Heaven’s and Hell’s hierarchies.
Unfortunately, this richness of themes and the complexity itself backfires.
Before long the various characters' paths cross in different, intricate ways, and several scenes are entirely too convoluted, some exchanges so oblique to result artificial, not piquant. That's fine occasionally, I personally don't like it much when characters engage in awkward dialogues just for the reader’s sake or overexplain, but too much vagueness doesn’t deepen the atmosphere of mystery when no firm worldbuilding and no notable characterization sustain the action; the more complexity, the subtler the handling needed.
I think this is the second main weakness of the book: when the narrative swings from too little information to redundancies and back again, the understanding is fragmented and the likely outcome is not thrilling tension, but deep confusion. Also my suspension of disbelief was sorely tested, not for the world depicted, but because several things that happen to further the plot are too convenient to be acceptable. Basically, the unpredictability is contrived; the tale suffers from too many jarring plot devices introduced to prevent the many storylines and layered intrigues from getting out of hand.
As would be expected I rarely felt the story moving with ease and grace. I won’t dwell on all the finer points, but the overall upshot was that my reading pace was slower and I got easily distracted, with a mounting sense of pointlessness.
The book has its moments, surely, and a few exciting twists. I liked the prose, definitely its best feature: the action spans from England to France to Italy and the descriptions are vivid, particularly those of the churches and the riches the angels require for residences up their standard of beauty. There is a nice amount of dark humor, particularly when the comic-relief character (Osbert) starts to adapt to his new circumstances, and I really loved that, he’s dully self-serving and changes innerly not a whit throughout the entire ordeal, in a nutshell he is the most pragmatic of the lot, and probably the only one who doesn’t care about antichrists, eternal souls, internecine conflicts and parricides. Particularly around two-thirds of the book, when the plot is in full hyperbole, there are some hilarious exchanges which added a fitting levity to the cascade of events.
Pace and rhythm were fine and the slow beginning to fast denouement scheme is truly appropriate considering the large scope of the story. However, when as a reader I don’t trust the author to properly deliver anymore, all I can focus on are the shortcomings and I probably fail to appreciate any wrap-up. Not that there was a substantial shift of gears anywhere in the book but again, among flat characters, unbalanced information, arbitrary author decisions and a meandering plot at some point I stopped trying to make head or tail of what was happening. I don’t think even in parodies you can just conjure surprises out of nowhere, there must needs be some in-story consistency and constraint.
And the climax? No payoff, just a frustrating open ending.
I can’t shake this feeling of disharmony and unrealised potential. Son of the Morning is an ambitious work, there are all the makings of a compelling story but the result is too sprawly and I was underwhelmed by the performance. It did not make me run for the hills - I had to force myself to reach the end but I wanted to because the tale somehow pulled me - I am just extremely disappointed that reading this book has not been enjoyable at all.
"Strive for the best outcome, prepare for the worst."
The story is indeed complex and it features a sizable cast of characters, there are different plotlines with a overarching trend and the prologue is very intriguing (sadly also the last you see of setting development). Maybe I was expecting too much, but the book fell short on several fronts.
The main flaw is that it is a plot-heavy book with flat characters.
The antagonists are duly evil and the protagonists seriously ambiguous, only two of them are vaguely decent persons. Very fine, I can come to care for unsympathetic scoundrels and I’m always eager to read about labyrinthine personalities and grey moralities, to search for hidden motives behind the obvious and guess at the redeeming potentials. Sadly I didn’t have to dig at all because there was little or none character growth. Most of them felt like they were following a set script in order to shoehorn the plot into preordained situations, often turning out shallow and inconsistent; there are children who act as adults, clever people who remain flinty in their courses of action when anyone else would start to reconsider and hard guys who have too sudden changes of heart. As a result, I failed to connect with any of the characters and none truly fascinated me either, which is also a drawback.
If nothing else I wished I could despise some of them, but how can you find rebarbative villains so foolishly evil or protagonists so obsessively monothematic?
Another consequence of this lack of roundness is that all the characters have to often explain how they feel and their actions to involve the reader (unfortunately in a very repetitive manner: Montagu mooning over Isabella for the nth time and illustrating yet again the motivations of his dilemma, or Edward imparting the same lesson in war finances, the divine right of kings and how harrowing his choices are, again and again…). The elucidations supplied for some of the most brow-raising behaviors simply reinforced my difficulty to feel emotionally engaged. Conversely, there is no overabundance of details as to how their intuitions come about, or about the mystique of the otherwordly or the unfolding agendas of the many factions involved.
One-dimensional characters are a killjoy in tale with serious themes, but I can accept plot over characterization if there is a captivating story and a very structured design. Undoubtedly this book has many interesting ideas and subplots, there are battles and skirmishes, mysteries, opposed interests, a touch of Sleeping Beauty (complete with briar roses), danbrownesque conspiracies, different POVs, intricate quests, the kings’ sport and a lot of upheaval in Heaven’s and Hell’s hierarchies.
Unfortunately, this richness of themes and the complexity itself backfires.
Before long the various characters' paths cross in different, intricate ways, and several scenes are entirely too convoluted, some exchanges so oblique to result artificial, not piquant. That's fine occasionally, I personally don't like it much when characters engage in awkward dialogues just for the reader’s sake or overexplain, but too much vagueness doesn’t deepen the atmosphere of mystery when no firm worldbuilding and no notable characterization sustain the action; the more complexity, the subtler the handling needed.
I think this is the second main weakness of the book: when the narrative swings from too little information to redundancies and back again, the understanding is fragmented and the likely outcome is not thrilling tension, but deep confusion. Also my suspension of disbelief was sorely tested, not for the world depicted, but because several things that happen to further the plot are too convenient to be acceptable. Basically, the unpredictability is contrived; the tale suffers from too many jarring plot devices introduced to prevent the many storylines and layered intrigues from getting out of hand.
As would be expected I rarely felt the story moving with ease and grace. I won’t dwell on all the finer points, but the overall upshot was that my reading pace was slower and I got easily distracted, with a mounting sense of pointlessness.
The book has its moments, surely, and a few exciting twists. I liked the prose, definitely its best feature: the action spans from England to France to Italy and the descriptions are vivid, particularly those of the churches and the riches the angels require for residences up their standard of beauty. There is a nice amount of dark humor, particularly when the comic-relief character (Osbert) starts to adapt to his new circumstances, and I really loved that, he’s dully self-serving and changes innerly not a whit throughout the entire ordeal, in a nutshell he is the most pragmatic of the lot, and probably the only one who doesn’t care about antichrists, eternal souls, internecine conflicts and parricides. Particularly around two-thirds of the book, when the plot is in full hyperbole, there are some hilarious exchanges which added a fitting levity to the cascade of events.
Pace and rhythm were fine and the slow beginning to fast denouement scheme is truly appropriate considering the large scope of the story. However, when as a reader I don’t trust the author to properly deliver anymore, all I can focus on are the shortcomings and I probably fail to appreciate any wrap-up. Not that there was a substantial shift of gears anywhere in the book but again, among flat characters, unbalanced information, arbitrary author decisions and a meandering plot at some point I stopped trying to make head or tail of what was happening. I don’t think even in parodies you can just conjure surprises out of nowhere, there must needs be some in-story consistency and constraint.
And the climax? No payoff, just a frustrating open ending.
I can’t shake this feeling of disharmony and unrealised potential. Son of the Morning is an ambitious work, there are all the makings of a compelling story but the result is too sprawly and I was underwhelmed by the performance. It did not make me run for the hills - I had to force myself to reach the end but I wanted to because the tale somehow pulled me - I am just extremely disappointed that reading this book has not been enjoyable at all.
"Strive for the best outcome, prepare for the worst."
February 15, 2016
3.5 of 5 stars at The BiblioSanctum http://bibliosanctum.com/2016/02/15/b...
Mark Alder is a nom de plume of Mark Barrowcliffe, an author whose books I have enjoyed in the past under another one of his pseudonyms, M.D. Lachlan. I’ve therefore had my eye on Son of the Morning ever since its initial release two years ago by the UK publisher, and it was with great excitement when I found out that the novel was finally going to be published here stateside by Pegasus Books in early 2016. Needless to say, I jumped at the chance to review an ARC of this reissue which will come complete with a brand new look, featuring Baroque painter Luca Giordano’s stunning masterpiece “St. Michael” gracing the cover.
Summarizing the story in this 700 page tome would be a difficult task, as you can imagine, but for brevity’s sake, Son of the Morning can be described as the Hundred Years’ War with angels and demons. Alder combines history with a great number of fantastical elements, chronicling multiple plot threads and character journeys in this reimagined version of the Middle Ages, primarily focusing on the earlier decades of the conflict. This period sees King Edward III of England attempting to assert his claim as the rightful heir to the French throne by waging war on his rival King Philip VI of France. Both sides vie for the support of God and his angels, but it appears that the Almighty has chosen not to bestow his favor on either one. Appeals to the angels are met with silence, leaving both kingdoms desperately scouring the continent for holy relics or other artifacts that might aid them in the war.
But if Heaven refuses to send aid, perhaps it can be found elsewhere…like in Hell. Tired and broke but still too proud to acknowledge fealty to France, Edward considers turning to the servants of Satan for the forces he will need to battle Philip, who is beset with troubles of his own. Meanwhile, a new Luciferian movement is sweeping through England’s poor and disenfranchised who are fed up with the notion that their God-ordained station is to be forever under the boot heels of the rich and noble. Its adherents believe that Lucifer is not actually the personification of evil, but that the Son of the Morning was usurped and wrongfully condemned. While mortal kings fight a holy war on earth, another is being waged by the denizens of Heaven and Hell and they are using our world and its politics as their battlefield.
Son of the Morning is by no means an easy read, with its intimidating page count and a concept that sounds astonishingly ambitious and, quite frankly, a little mad. So I won’t blame you if you’re feeling a bit skeptical. However, I assure you it actually works quite well. For better or worse, the author manages to capture the atmosphere of the times, right down to the rigid feudal system and the theological influences on the attitudes towards the lower classes. It’s possible that God’s “order” of things might be even more ingrained in this alternate historical society where angels and demons are real. One can imagine how hard it would be to argue against these beliefs, when everyone has witnessed—with their own very eyes—divine beings taking orders from kings and winning them wars.
Still, it doesn’t mean that the poor and the downtrodden have to be happy with this hierarchy. This is where the book’s world-building stands out, exploring religious arguments and coming up with its twist on Heaven and Hell. After all, how could God support a system that benefits the wealthy lord while his serf labors and starves? How could He smile upon the royals who do nothing but wage war while the poor in their kingdoms get even poorer? This couldn’t be the compassionate and righteous God, so it stands to reason that everything taught by the Crown and the Church is built on lies. A key character of this story is a youth named Dowzabel who comes from a religion that believes Lucifer was the true creator, and that God struck him down in his jealousy and stole his place in Heaven. So now this world’s Hell has two factions, Lucifer and his legions of demons who are separate entities from Satan and his devils, who are servants of God. It’s important to understand this distinction when trying to follow the story, and admittedly it could take some time to fully wrap your mind around the complicated lore and nomenclature.
Medieval history is also not my strong suit, and my knowledge of the Hundred Years’ War is decidedly patchy, meaning I had to pause frequently while reading in order to get all these people and events straight in my head, especially when practically every other character is named Edward or Joan. Wikipedia was my constant reading companion. But this was just my personal experience; if you’re a history buff or a fan of this particular period, you probably won’t stumble around as much as I did. It helped that the story was overall very riveting, even though the pacing in the first half of the book was slower and uneven while the narrative was busy filling in the necessary background information and establishing the key players. Son of the Morning being such a lengthy novel, this means getting to the good stuff does require a fair bit of commitment on the reader’s part. I’m also not entirely convinced that the book needed to be so long. I’m certainly no stranger to these epic fantasy doorstoppers, but I did suffer a little from “long book fatigue” by the end of this one, because quite honestly, I think this story could have shed a couple hundred pages and it still would have ended up just as good.
Bottom line, there’s a good chance fans of historical fantasy will love this book, particularly if you enjoy stories set in this time period, but Son of the Morning will pull you in even if you don’t know much about the Hundred Years’ War. Mark Alder has achieved something really special here, breathing new life into historical events and figures by smoothly integrating them with theological and speculative elements. A highly captivating read.
Mark Alder is a nom de plume of Mark Barrowcliffe, an author whose books I have enjoyed in the past under another one of his pseudonyms, M.D. Lachlan. I’ve therefore had my eye on Son of the Morning ever since its initial release two years ago by the UK publisher, and it was with great excitement when I found out that the novel was finally going to be published here stateside by Pegasus Books in early 2016. Needless to say, I jumped at the chance to review an ARC of this reissue which will come complete with a brand new look, featuring Baroque painter Luca Giordano’s stunning masterpiece “St. Michael” gracing the cover.
Summarizing the story in this 700 page tome would be a difficult task, as you can imagine, but for brevity’s sake, Son of the Morning can be described as the Hundred Years’ War with angels and demons. Alder combines history with a great number of fantastical elements, chronicling multiple plot threads and character journeys in this reimagined version of the Middle Ages, primarily focusing on the earlier decades of the conflict. This period sees King Edward III of England attempting to assert his claim as the rightful heir to the French throne by waging war on his rival King Philip VI of France. Both sides vie for the support of God and his angels, but it appears that the Almighty has chosen not to bestow his favor on either one. Appeals to the angels are met with silence, leaving both kingdoms desperately scouring the continent for holy relics or other artifacts that might aid them in the war.
But if Heaven refuses to send aid, perhaps it can be found elsewhere…like in Hell. Tired and broke but still too proud to acknowledge fealty to France, Edward considers turning to the servants of Satan for the forces he will need to battle Philip, who is beset with troubles of his own. Meanwhile, a new Luciferian movement is sweeping through England’s poor and disenfranchised who are fed up with the notion that their God-ordained station is to be forever under the boot heels of the rich and noble. Its adherents believe that Lucifer is not actually the personification of evil, but that the Son of the Morning was usurped and wrongfully condemned. While mortal kings fight a holy war on earth, another is being waged by the denizens of Heaven and Hell and they are using our world and its politics as their battlefield.
Son of the Morning is by no means an easy read, with its intimidating page count and a concept that sounds astonishingly ambitious and, quite frankly, a little mad. So I won’t blame you if you’re feeling a bit skeptical. However, I assure you it actually works quite well. For better or worse, the author manages to capture the atmosphere of the times, right down to the rigid feudal system and the theological influences on the attitudes towards the lower classes. It’s possible that God’s “order” of things might be even more ingrained in this alternate historical society where angels and demons are real. One can imagine how hard it would be to argue against these beliefs, when everyone has witnessed—with their own very eyes—divine beings taking orders from kings and winning them wars.
Still, it doesn’t mean that the poor and the downtrodden have to be happy with this hierarchy. This is where the book’s world-building stands out, exploring religious arguments and coming up with its twist on Heaven and Hell. After all, how could God support a system that benefits the wealthy lord while his serf labors and starves? How could He smile upon the royals who do nothing but wage war while the poor in their kingdoms get even poorer? This couldn’t be the compassionate and righteous God, so it stands to reason that everything taught by the Crown and the Church is built on lies. A key character of this story is a youth named Dowzabel who comes from a religion that believes Lucifer was the true creator, and that God struck him down in his jealousy and stole his place in Heaven. So now this world’s Hell has two factions, Lucifer and his legions of demons who are separate entities from Satan and his devils, who are servants of God. It’s important to understand this distinction when trying to follow the story, and admittedly it could take some time to fully wrap your mind around the complicated lore and nomenclature.
Medieval history is also not my strong suit, and my knowledge of the Hundred Years’ War is decidedly patchy, meaning I had to pause frequently while reading in order to get all these people and events straight in my head, especially when practically every other character is named Edward or Joan. Wikipedia was my constant reading companion. But this was just my personal experience; if you’re a history buff or a fan of this particular period, you probably won’t stumble around as much as I did. It helped that the story was overall very riveting, even though the pacing in the first half of the book was slower and uneven while the narrative was busy filling in the necessary background information and establishing the key players. Son of the Morning being such a lengthy novel, this means getting to the good stuff does require a fair bit of commitment on the reader’s part. I’m also not entirely convinced that the book needed to be so long. I’m certainly no stranger to these epic fantasy doorstoppers, but I did suffer a little from “long book fatigue” by the end of this one, because quite honestly, I think this story could have shed a couple hundred pages and it still would have ended up just as good.
Bottom line, there’s a good chance fans of historical fantasy will love this book, particularly if you enjoy stories set in this time period, but Son of the Morning will pull you in even if you don’t know much about the Hundred Years’ War. Mark Alder has achieved something really special here, breathing new life into historical events and figures by smoothly integrating them with theological and speculative elements. A highly captivating read.
November 17, 2025
Pre-review: The 100 Years Wars between British and France historical stuff crossover demons/angels? That sounds interesting.
Premise: England and France were locked in the 100 Years War, the French King Philip, had gained the mythical and mighty power of heavenly angels backing his army, while the English King, King Edward III, had none. Plus the forces of Heaven and Hell(s) were fighting among each other, trying to influence the Earth and its kings. In the middle of the conflicts, a young boy named Dow was forced by powerful men (and their servants) to summon the force of Hell and the demons for their own ends.
Rating: 2.8 stars is me being kind. The book is overly long and it's quite a mixed bag of good and bad.
(1) I admit I started skimming through the story after the page 100 mark.
(2) The stuff about Lucifer and the Luciferians are interesting, I want to know how the author would justify his mythology....
(3.1) I don't like Dow as a character all that much.
(3.2) I am okay with characters being self-serving, unlikable and stuff but it's hard to root for anyone in the story.
(4) the main character Dow, so far he is so flat and boring 😔
(5) Arguably it's interesting to see kings trying to curry favours from God, angels and demons.
(6) if Dow is supposed to be the tortured anti-hero then the author hadn't spent enough time to develop him and make me root for him. 😔
(7) so far, too many main characters and plotlines, not enough time for me to understand or warm up to any of them.
(8) Queen Isabella is the only woman with some screen time in the book. Argh.
(9) The concept is interesting but the characters... not so much. I had a hard time remembering who is who.
(10)
Sighs! I desperately need Dow to stand up to fight those who had wronged and abused him and seriously raise some Hell in the end, but........it doesn't actually happen?! Plus Dow and Co. just go off to...somewhere? I don't even know anymore.
(11) Sadly for Dow, after his loved ones were killed, he hasn't have a chance to make friends with anyone else and without some supporting characters to actual support him, I found the relationships among the main characters really weak and unconvincing.
(12) I have no problem with Lucifer being depicted , but I can't feel related with any of these mythical stuff so far...
(13) But...will I read the second book? I probably will, I probably will...
Premise: England and France were locked in the 100 Years War, the French King Philip, had gained the mythical and mighty power of heavenly angels backing his army, while the English King, King Edward III, had none. Plus the forces of Heaven and Hell(s) were fighting among each other, trying to influence the Earth and its kings. In the middle of the conflicts, a young boy named Dow was forced by powerful men (and their servants) to summon the force of Hell and the demons for their own ends.
Rating: 2.8 stars is me being kind. The book is overly long and it's quite a mixed bag of good and bad.
(1) I admit I started skimming through the story after the page 100 mark.
(2) The stuff about Lucifer and the Luciferians are interesting, I want to know how the author would justify his mythology....
(3.1) I don't like Dow as a character all that much.
(3.2) I am okay with characters being self-serving, unlikable and stuff but it's hard to root for anyone in the story.
(4) the main character Dow, so far he is so flat and boring 😔
(5) Arguably it's interesting to see kings trying to curry favours from God, angels and demons.
(6) if Dow is supposed to be the tortured anti-hero then the author hadn't spent enough time to develop him and make me root for him. 😔
(7) so far, too many main characters and plotlines, not enough time for me to understand or warm up to any of them.
(8) Queen Isabella is the only woman with some screen time in the book. Argh.
(9) The concept is interesting but the characters... not so much. I had a hard time remembering who is who.
(10)
" I will take the banner and raise Hell here."
Sighs! I desperately need Dow to stand up to fight those who had wronged and abused him and seriously raise some Hell in the end, but........it doesn't actually happen?! Plus Dow and Co. just go off to...somewhere? I don't even know anymore.
(11) Sadly for Dow, after his loved ones were killed, he hasn't have a chance to make friends with anyone else and without some supporting characters to actual support him, I found the relationships among the main characters really weak and unconvincing.
(12) I have no problem with Lucifer being depicted , but I can't feel related with any of these mythical stuff so far...
(13) But...will I read the second book? I probably will, I probably will...
April 26, 2014
The Hundred Years War spanning the 116 years between 1337 and 1453 is one of those great sprawling medieval conflicts that roams back and forth across Northern Europe encompassing a huge number of iconic battles and names of Medieval history. Crecy, Agincourt, Saint-Omar, Tournai, Poitiers just some of the battles that have been immortalised in English and presumably in French consciousness for almost 700 years. We have icons like Edward the Black Prince, Joan of Arc, John the Blind, Henry V, Charles the Bad just a few of the big names that are what you think of if you think of the period. At the same time Europe suffered a series of peasant revolts and an almost total overthrow of the traditional feudal system largely due to the ravages of the Black Death. There is a massive amount that can be written about the period, so much fodder for authors. Something I've never seen touched upon though is the Hundred Years War taking the medieval stance on the nature of Angels and Devils into account.
Medieval theology is something that to modern eyes seems slightly mental. If you read medieval religious or social texts you will find numerous accounts of people genuinely interacting with a huge array of Saints, Angels, Imps and Demons. Many of these are accounts of ordinary common folk stumbling across a Demon as they go about their daily business, but it's not just gullible peasants who see these things. Serious, sensible and highly educated men and women totally believe that these heavenly and hellish creatures existed and could be appealed to. The creatures were a very real part of the actual world, a fact confirmed by all of the great minds of the day. They were as real to the medieval consciousness as microbes and atoms are to the modern mind.
With Son of the Morning Mark Alder has taken this theological concept of Angels and Demons being all around us and made it literal fact. The Angels and the Saints quite literally dwell amongst the relics that fill the medieval churches. The more beautiful and splendid the church the more powerful the Angel that is likely to choose to live there. The worthy, the pious, those chosen by God can have the types of very real conversations with these beings that you usually only find discussed in the writings of people like Julian of Norwich or Margery Kempe. At the same time demons are able to take physical form and disrupt God's plan on earth in a totally literal manner, just as the most educated medieval mind would have known they could. When a King declares that the Angels are with his army, and when the troops have a vision of a heavenly Host streaming above the battlefield this isn't superstitious nonsense, but probable fact. Now both the French and English Kings are finding their respective saints and angels increasingly unresponsive, and have to work out if this is a sign of God's displeasure or if something 'unholy' needs to be done to break the stalemate.
As if the conceptual leap it took to combine medieval action and politics with the high fantasy of Angelic intervention wasn't enough to make this book brilliant; Alder also draws in elements of Milton's Paradise Lost concerning Lucifer and his fallen angels, turning the whole concept of God and the battle between Heaven and Hell on it's head. In Son of the Morning mankind has been deceived, the accepted concepts surrounding creation, Christ and the hierarchy between Heaven and Hell is based on lies. 'God' created nothing but the barren wastes of Hell. God saw the beauty of Paradise that Lucifer had formed and in his failure and rage imprisoned Lucifer in Hell binding mankind up in a system of rules and sins that demanded worship of him alone. These sins are so wide reaching that only a tiny minority can ever hope to avoid the fires of Hell. At one point a character, confused about why Hell is so overcrowded asks if Christ didn't visit Hell to release all the just souls who had died with no chance of his Grace. The answer 'He did. And he freed both of them.' Only two simply because of the impossibility for mankind to live by the Ten Commandments. Lucifer escaped Hell only once and came to Earth where he was called Christ. That was until God arranged for him to be betrayed, crucified and returned to his prison, only later spreading the rumour that 'Christ' was in fact the Son of God and a sacrifice in God's name. By combining the paradox of mankind's base nature vs the purity demanded by the Bible, the disparity between the vengeful God of the Old Testament and the message of peace and love of the New Testament and the world full of death, pain and disease the was normal day to day living for medieval people Alder has come up with a solution that draws in all of these threads and which has the potential to be taken so much further in the upcoming instalments in the story.
There are so many places that this can go. The s**tstorm that hits Europe with the outbreaks of unprecedented vileness that was the Black Death, and the total collapse of 'God's order' in the form of the feudal system, I can't wait to see how these are handled. The concept of Lucifer as a saviour of the people spreading his message of equality 'When Adam delved and Eve Span who was then the Gentleman?' that helped unite revolts both in England and in France only to be brutally crushed by Richard II in the case of London and by Charles the Bad, King of Navarre in the Jacquerie of Paris. This all fits beautifully into the world that Alder has created. As does the total and almost unique brutality of the chevanchee used by military commanders during the period, why else would they commit such crimes unless spurred on by unholy forces?
I'm hoping, and guessing, that future books in the series will delve further into the reasons behind the various unfortunate nicknames given to some of the great war leaders. There is so much material that can be drawn into this brilliant story and used to bolster up the concept of demons, devils and angels all at war. Things like the wording of the momento mori on the tomb of the Black Prince, and the horrific but unlikely death of Charles of Navarre as well as the spate of sightings of angels like Michael that helped raise Joan of Arc to prominence. Even the documented interest Isabella of France took in the supernatural during her retirement and her eventual adoption of the habit of the Poor Clares ending with her burial alongside the heart of her husband; all of these factors will hopefully be drawn in to further enrich this incredible fantasy world.
Ok so in case you can't tell, I love this book; I'm blown away by just how cool the concept is, how well it's been drawn together and just why no one has thought to do this before (if they have, I apologise but I've not come across it and would love to be pointed in the right direction). This book isn't just a cool concept though. There are some wonderful descriptive passages both of the minutiae of daily life, the fabrics and textures of people come across daily and of the huge battle scenes. Think Bernard Cornwell style battles raging across the page, being chased by escapees from Dante. In fact one aspect I really should touch on is the vision of Hell and of the Devils and Demons that reside there. The descriptions of angels are pretty cool; lots of bright lights, colours, beauty, trumpets; think Monty Python's Holy Grail on overdrive. The descriptions of hell, however, are something else. Anyone who's ever seen the medieval wall art that survives in some of the little churches that escaped the Reformation's zeal will know that medieval concepts of Hell were brutal and bizarre. Think the men with faces in their chests that reside around the outer edges of the Hereford Mappa Mundi, or the visions of Hell that make up the famous works by Hiernymous Bosch; what you get here is all of those things and then some.... The devils are terrifying and yet often strangely comical as they cavort and rampage across the countryside. Rotten and corrupt they manage to combine everything that is vile. Even down to being petty minded, but violent, bureaucrats who simply don't realise that their boss, God, is a lunatic! They also have some of the brilliantly ridiculous names that are found in the East Anglian Witchfinder records, all called things like Catspaw or KnowMuch this adds to some of the comic ridiculousness of the interaction between serious and stately nobility and the devils found in this novel.
As if this weren't enough Son of the Morning also has a cast of really wonderful characters. Osbert the Pardoner is a particular favourite of mine, with his Blackadderesque view of the world as being quite ready to drop all manner of cr*p on him from a great height and his willingness to manipulate the forces of Earth, Heaven and Hell to make his way through existence as easily as possible. He is given some of the best comic lines as he finds himself in a variety of unpleasant but unlikely situations. His glee at finally getting hold of some actual relics rather than the knock-offs he's been selling all his life is very funny to read, as are his moments of baiting Father Edwin. William Montegu is also a great character, demonstrating the idea of classic chivalry corrupted, and through him we get to see the whole process of nobility sinking into absolute sin and losing everything.
One minor complaint is that the female characters are a little lacking both in quantity and in substance. With the period setting and the idea of war and politics as a place for men this is at least understandable, although it is a little infuriating that the female characters that are available don't seem to be utilised as much as they maybe could be. The two predominant females, Queens Isabella and Joan don't come across as being particularly unique from one another, although there is scope for them to show their differences a little more in future books. So this is a minor quibble at this stage.
This is a long old book, 779 pages in the edition I read, but please don't be put off (if you've managed to read all the way through this review then you are probably up to the task anyway!) Every page is worth it here, there is a wealth of detail, of language and of thought that needs every single page. As this book only covers the first 16 odd years of the conflict I'm hopeful that there will be many more books to come and can't wait to see how the author resolves some of the mysteries surrounding the great heroes and antiheroes of the period.
Medieval theology is something that to modern eyes seems slightly mental. If you read medieval religious or social texts you will find numerous accounts of people genuinely interacting with a huge array of Saints, Angels, Imps and Demons. Many of these are accounts of ordinary common folk stumbling across a Demon as they go about their daily business, but it's not just gullible peasants who see these things. Serious, sensible and highly educated men and women totally believe that these heavenly and hellish creatures existed and could be appealed to. The creatures were a very real part of the actual world, a fact confirmed by all of the great minds of the day. They were as real to the medieval consciousness as microbes and atoms are to the modern mind.
With Son of the Morning Mark Alder has taken this theological concept of Angels and Demons being all around us and made it literal fact. The Angels and the Saints quite literally dwell amongst the relics that fill the medieval churches. The more beautiful and splendid the church the more powerful the Angel that is likely to choose to live there. The worthy, the pious, those chosen by God can have the types of very real conversations with these beings that you usually only find discussed in the writings of people like Julian of Norwich or Margery Kempe. At the same time demons are able to take physical form and disrupt God's plan on earth in a totally literal manner, just as the most educated medieval mind would have known they could. When a King declares that the Angels are with his army, and when the troops have a vision of a heavenly Host streaming above the battlefield this isn't superstitious nonsense, but probable fact. Now both the French and English Kings are finding their respective saints and angels increasingly unresponsive, and have to work out if this is a sign of God's displeasure or if something 'unholy' needs to be done to break the stalemate.
As if the conceptual leap it took to combine medieval action and politics with the high fantasy of Angelic intervention wasn't enough to make this book brilliant; Alder also draws in elements of Milton's Paradise Lost concerning Lucifer and his fallen angels, turning the whole concept of God and the battle between Heaven and Hell on it's head. In Son of the Morning mankind has been deceived, the accepted concepts surrounding creation, Christ and the hierarchy between Heaven and Hell is based on lies. 'God' created nothing but the barren wastes of Hell. God saw the beauty of Paradise that Lucifer had formed and in his failure and rage imprisoned Lucifer in Hell binding mankind up in a system of rules and sins that demanded worship of him alone. These sins are so wide reaching that only a tiny minority can ever hope to avoid the fires of Hell. At one point a character, confused about why Hell is so overcrowded asks if Christ didn't visit Hell to release all the just souls who had died with no chance of his Grace. The answer 'He did. And he freed both of them.' Only two simply because of the impossibility for mankind to live by the Ten Commandments. Lucifer escaped Hell only once and came to Earth where he was called Christ. That was until God arranged for him to be betrayed, crucified and returned to his prison, only later spreading the rumour that 'Christ' was in fact the Son of God and a sacrifice in God's name. By combining the paradox of mankind's base nature vs the purity demanded by the Bible, the disparity between the vengeful God of the Old Testament and the message of peace and love of the New Testament and the world full of death, pain and disease the was normal day to day living for medieval people Alder has come up with a solution that draws in all of these threads and which has the potential to be taken so much further in the upcoming instalments in the story.
There are so many places that this can go. The s**tstorm that hits Europe with the outbreaks of unprecedented vileness that was the Black Death, and the total collapse of 'God's order' in the form of the feudal system, I can't wait to see how these are handled. The concept of Lucifer as a saviour of the people spreading his message of equality 'When Adam delved and Eve Span who was then the Gentleman?' that helped unite revolts both in England and in France only to be brutally crushed by Richard II in the case of London and by Charles the Bad, King of Navarre in the Jacquerie of Paris. This all fits beautifully into the world that Alder has created. As does the total and almost unique brutality of the chevanchee used by military commanders during the period, why else would they commit such crimes unless spurred on by unholy forces?
I'm hoping, and guessing, that future books in the series will delve further into the reasons behind the various unfortunate nicknames given to some of the great war leaders. There is so much material that can be drawn into this brilliant story and used to bolster up the concept of demons, devils and angels all at war. Things like the wording of the momento mori on the tomb of the Black Prince, and the horrific but unlikely death of Charles of Navarre as well as the spate of sightings of angels like Michael that helped raise Joan of Arc to prominence. Even the documented interest Isabella of France took in the supernatural during her retirement and her eventual adoption of the habit of the Poor Clares ending with her burial alongside the heart of her husband; all of these factors will hopefully be drawn in to further enrich this incredible fantasy world.
Ok so in case you can't tell, I love this book; I'm blown away by just how cool the concept is, how well it's been drawn together and just why no one has thought to do this before (if they have, I apologise but I've not come across it and would love to be pointed in the right direction). This book isn't just a cool concept though. There are some wonderful descriptive passages both of the minutiae of daily life, the fabrics and textures of people come across daily and of the huge battle scenes. Think Bernard Cornwell style battles raging across the page, being chased by escapees from Dante. In fact one aspect I really should touch on is the vision of Hell and of the Devils and Demons that reside there. The descriptions of angels are pretty cool; lots of bright lights, colours, beauty, trumpets; think Monty Python's Holy Grail on overdrive. The descriptions of hell, however, are something else. Anyone who's ever seen the medieval wall art that survives in some of the little churches that escaped the Reformation's zeal will know that medieval concepts of Hell were brutal and bizarre. Think the men with faces in their chests that reside around the outer edges of the Hereford Mappa Mundi, or the visions of Hell that make up the famous works by Hiernymous Bosch; what you get here is all of those things and then some.... The devils are terrifying and yet often strangely comical as they cavort and rampage across the countryside. Rotten and corrupt they manage to combine everything that is vile. Even down to being petty minded, but violent, bureaucrats who simply don't realise that their boss, God, is a lunatic! They also have some of the brilliantly ridiculous names that are found in the East Anglian Witchfinder records, all called things like Catspaw or KnowMuch this adds to some of the comic ridiculousness of the interaction between serious and stately nobility and the devils found in this novel.
As if this weren't enough Son of the Morning also has a cast of really wonderful characters. Osbert the Pardoner is a particular favourite of mine, with his Blackadderesque view of the world as being quite ready to drop all manner of cr*p on him from a great height and his willingness to manipulate the forces of Earth, Heaven and Hell to make his way through existence as easily as possible. He is given some of the best comic lines as he finds himself in a variety of unpleasant but unlikely situations. His glee at finally getting hold of some actual relics rather than the knock-offs he's been selling all his life is very funny to read, as are his moments of baiting Father Edwin. William Montegu is also a great character, demonstrating the idea of classic chivalry corrupted, and through him we get to see the whole process of nobility sinking into absolute sin and losing everything.
One minor complaint is that the female characters are a little lacking both in quantity and in substance. With the period setting and the idea of war and politics as a place for men this is at least understandable, although it is a little infuriating that the female characters that are available don't seem to be utilised as much as they maybe could be. The two predominant females, Queens Isabella and Joan don't come across as being particularly unique from one another, although there is scope for them to show their differences a little more in future books. So this is a minor quibble at this stage.
This is a long old book, 779 pages in the edition I read, but please don't be put off (if you've managed to read all the way through this review then you are probably up to the task anyway!) Every page is worth it here, there is a wealth of detail, of language and of thought that needs every single page. As this book only covers the first 16 odd years of the conflict I'm hopeful that there will be many more books to come and can't wait to see how the author resolves some of the mysteries surrounding the great heroes and antiheroes of the period.
May 3, 2014
Writing 5/5
Imagination 5/5
Plot 5/5
Setting 5/5
Characters 4/5
My Overall Enjoyment 5/5
Expertly written, highly detailed, and vividly imagined, this is an outstanding work of historical fiction/alternate history which pulled me in with its prose and story from page 1. Even at 700 pages, I did not feel it was too long, rather I was sad for it to end because I wanted more. For those that follow my reviews, you know I prefer books on the short side but this was so fun and so epic that I don't think it would have been the same shorter.
I did not plan on reviewing this however it was so good I want to say a few words about it. Being only very vaguely familiar with the time period in which the story takes place (The Hundred Years war from 1337-1453 between England and France), I wasn't overly interested in reading this. It was on my radar but until I saw Mark Lawrence mention how beautiful the prose was I still wasn't sold. Mark, my favorite author, has never let me down on a recommendation so I decided to move on this book sooner rather than later even though my TBR pile is insane right now. This is one of the best books this year, and probably in my top 10 of all time.
It takes the story of Christianity, of which I am a believer, and turns it on its head. I don't get the impression the author is malicious in his take on the history of Christianity but certainly there are some who would not be able to handle a work that so twists what they believe. For me, the story the author tells is incredibly thought provoking, causing me to think about religion, history, warfare, and philosophy in new ways.
Son of the Morning is overflowing with sorcerers and magicians, devils, demons, angels, fallen angels, imps as "familiars", saints, Watchers(Nephilim),and includes Satan, Lucifer, and God all interacting with a huge cast of priests, kings, queens, princes, mercenaries, generals and other characters from both France and England. Knights Templars and Hospitallers also make appearances and are very important to the story. Wildly imagined and often horrifying demons and devils are released from Hell as its doors are opened and closed using magic circles and relics from saints and angels. There are relics galore, all being fought over and searched for across the continents, and as I am a huge fan of relics this alone is a huge attraction to me. There is tons of political intrigue and warfare which includes a naval battle as well as sieges and ground warfare. The plot is complex and multi-layered and at times overwhelming to follow but well worth the effort.
I read this as more of a plot based book rather than a book focusing on getting to know the characters. The character building was very good and I enjoyed many of them. However, because of the constant action and introduction to new characters it just seemed like the plot and action was what fueled my obsession with this book (as well as the wonderful writing and imagination).
This is a dark book, set during a dark time. There are really no "good guys" and for me I did not know who to root for, which is a crazy feeling while reading. This is a time period of epic civil unrest and church dogma and its very fascinating to see how these elements play out on a large and small scale. Disease and violence are parts of everyday life and the writing brings us to that time. It was very atmospheric; I felt like I was there.
I have about 50 pages left in the book. I will be very sad when I finish and I don't know how another book will live up to the standard set here. But I felt that way before and I have some great looking books coming up. No matter how this ends, I can't wait to go back to this series and I pray that the next is released soon. This book comes with the highest possible recommendation. I just don't see how someone could not like this book. It's so unique and I have never read anything like it. If you are looking for a book to get lost in and unlike anything you have ever read, try this.
Imagination 5/5
Plot 5/5
Setting 5/5
Characters 4/5
My Overall Enjoyment 5/5
Expertly written, highly detailed, and vividly imagined, this is an outstanding work of historical fiction/alternate history which pulled me in with its prose and story from page 1. Even at 700 pages, I did not feel it was too long, rather I was sad for it to end because I wanted more. For those that follow my reviews, you know I prefer books on the short side but this was so fun and so epic that I don't think it would have been the same shorter.
I did not plan on reviewing this however it was so good I want to say a few words about it. Being only very vaguely familiar with the time period in which the story takes place (The Hundred Years war from 1337-1453 between England and France), I wasn't overly interested in reading this. It was on my radar but until I saw Mark Lawrence mention how beautiful the prose was I still wasn't sold. Mark, my favorite author, has never let me down on a recommendation so I decided to move on this book sooner rather than later even though my TBR pile is insane right now. This is one of the best books this year, and probably in my top 10 of all time.
It takes the story of Christianity, of which I am a believer, and turns it on its head. I don't get the impression the author is malicious in his take on the history of Christianity but certainly there are some who would not be able to handle a work that so twists what they believe. For me, the story the author tells is incredibly thought provoking, causing me to think about religion, history, warfare, and philosophy in new ways.
Son of the Morning is overflowing with sorcerers and magicians, devils, demons, angels, fallen angels, imps as "familiars", saints, Watchers(Nephilim),and includes Satan, Lucifer, and God all interacting with a huge cast of priests, kings, queens, princes, mercenaries, generals and other characters from both France and England. Knights Templars and Hospitallers also make appearances and are very important to the story. Wildly imagined and often horrifying demons and devils are released from Hell as its doors are opened and closed using magic circles and relics from saints and angels. There are relics galore, all being fought over and searched for across the continents, and as I am a huge fan of relics this alone is a huge attraction to me. There is tons of political intrigue and warfare which includes a naval battle as well as sieges and ground warfare. The plot is complex and multi-layered and at times overwhelming to follow but well worth the effort.
I read this as more of a plot based book rather than a book focusing on getting to know the characters. The character building was very good and I enjoyed many of them. However, because of the constant action and introduction to new characters it just seemed like the plot and action was what fueled my obsession with this book (as well as the wonderful writing and imagination).
This is a dark book, set during a dark time. There are really no "good guys" and for me I did not know who to root for, which is a crazy feeling while reading. This is a time period of epic civil unrest and church dogma and its very fascinating to see how these elements play out on a large and small scale. Disease and violence are parts of everyday life and the writing brings us to that time. It was very atmospheric; I felt like I was there.
I have about 50 pages left in the book. I will be very sad when I finish and I don't know how another book will live up to the standard set here. But I felt that way before and I have some great looking books coming up. No matter how this ends, I can't wait to go back to this series and I pray that the next is released soon. This book comes with the highest possible recommendation. I just don't see how someone could not like this book. It's so unique and I have never read anything like it. If you are looking for a book to get lost in and unlike anything you have ever read, try this.
December 25, 2017
Son of the Morning is a tremendous historical fantasy.
Imagine a medieval Europe, where angels are real and living in the cathedrals of Europe's royal lines. The kings try to raise them and get their blessings in battle.
In that same Europe a boy has been found, a Luciferian. The Luciferians believe that Lucifer is the true creator and he was usurped and banished to hell by another usurping angel who now calls himself god. The fallen angels of Lucifer are the demons...who are also real.
In Hell god appointed Satan and his devils to imprison Lucifer and of course all the sinners. So, in this world, devils are also real.
As Europe's kings struggle to get acknowledged by their angels, they and their courtiers turn to demons and devils, some real, some in human form.
It's a story rich with political and divine intrigue, of primal magic and ritual and with so much historical detail that it feels very real.
There's a plethora of characters, some historical, others imagined, and combined they are offering a unique and interesting cast.
The book builds up very slowly, but especially the last 100ish pages were clear 5 star material for me.
A word of caution might be uttered to those who are strong Christian believers. As you can imagine with that topic, the book twists and turns Christian core values and beliefs. If that makes you uncomfortable, then this might be a series to skip.
For all other readers, I wholeheartedly recommend to give this very unique series a go.
Imagine a medieval Europe, where angels are real and living in the cathedrals of Europe's royal lines. The kings try to raise them and get their blessings in battle.
In that same Europe a boy has been found, a Luciferian. The Luciferians believe that Lucifer is the true creator and he was usurped and banished to hell by another usurping angel who now calls himself god. The fallen angels of Lucifer are the demons...who are also real.
In Hell god appointed Satan and his devils to imprison Lucifer and of course all the sinners. So, in this world, devils are also real.
As Europe's kings struggle to get acknowledged by their angels, they and their courtiers turn to demons and devils, some real, some in human form.
It's a story rich with political and divine intrigue, of primal magic and ritual and with so much historical detail that it feels very real.
There's a plethora of characters, some historical, others imagined, and combined they are offering a unique and interesting cast.
The book builds up very slowly, but especially the last 100ish pages were clear 5 star material for me.
A word of caution might be uttered to those who are strong Christian believers. As you can imagine with that topic, the book twists and turns Christian core values and beliefs. If that makes you uncomfortable, then this might be a series to skip.
For all other readers, I wholeheartedly recommend to give this very unique series a go.
January 27, 2014
When I first read the blurb for Son of the Morning it was like someone took my ideal premise for a book and wrote it, needless to say I had high hopes going in and I wasn't disappointed.
Son of the Morning is an alternate history view of the hundred years was with angels, daemons and devils. Mark Alder paints a vivid picture of court politics, city slums and everything in between. The protagonists are taken from every level of each side including kings, queens heretics and bankers and each of them has their own voice, personality and motives.
The heart of this story is the struggles between France and England in the lead up to and during the first years of the Hundred Years War with each side looking for the upper hand and a sign from God they’re right. Philip Valois is king of France but newly crowned and not secure. He has more men than Edward of England but Phillips angels refuse to join the fight so he waits, refusing to fight until his angels give him their backing. Edward of England refuses to pay homage to Philip and its fighting to secure his lands in France. He has less men, no angels (for reasons that form one of the main plots of the book) but refuses to back down. Dowzabel is a Luciferan aiming to restore Lucifer to his place ruling, removing God the usurper from his place in heaven. The background of God and Lucifer is described in the first chapter and I knew after reading it I was going to love this book.
One of my favorite things about the book is the actual existence of the angels, daemons and devils. They eventually join in on earth and they each have their own personalities and mannerisms. The angels are indifferent, slightly insane and just want to stare at shiny things and stare at the sun, when they get upset they burn things. In short they are the small children of the celestial world. The devils are Gods jailers and are sticklers for rules and organization, at lower levels horribly unimaginative at higher levels interested in politics and one upmanship. The Daemons are on the side of lucifer and effectively renegade angels and devils, they are the least represented of the celestial beings, hopefully we will get to see the more in the future books. Some of the trips to hell and the POV celestial characters were my favourite parts of the book, it seems that Mark Alder had great fun writing these bits and it definitely comes through with the characters and locations.
Needless to say with the court relationships, families and history of really thirteenth century Europe are complex with ties, grudges and alliances going back years. This can make starting the book quite complex until you understand them. Fortunately this is Europe not Westeros so there's no need for large appendices and half remembered facts from 200 pages ago, there's Wikipedia for all that.
Son of the Morning says it's perfect for fans of Bernard Cornwell and Geroge R R Martin and that's true but it's definitely more Martin than Cornwell. That said I'd recommend it to anyone with an interest in history or fantasy. Son of the Morning a great read and there plenty in there for any fan of the genre to enjoy. It doesn't take itself too seriously and is a great romp through medieval Europe, hell and everywhere in between. I for one will be looking forward to the (hopeful) continuation of the series.
Son of the Morning is an alternate history view of the hundred years was with angels, daemons and devils. Mark Alder paints a vivid picture of court politics, city slums and everything in between. The protagonists are taken from every level of each side including kings, queens heretics and bankers and each of them has their own voice, personality and motives.
The heart of this story is the struggles between France and England in the lead up to and during the first years of the Hundred Years War with each side looking for the upper hand and a sign from God they’re right. Philip Valois is king of France but newly crowned and not secure. He has more men than Edward of England but Phillips angels refuse to join the fight so he waits, refusing to fight until his angels give him their backing. Edward of England refuses to pay homage to Philip and its fighting to secure his lands in France. He has less men, no angels (for reasons that form one of the main plots of the book) but refuses to back down. Dowzabel is a Luciferan aiming to restore Lucifer to his place ruling, removing God the usurper from his place in heaven. The background of God and Lucifer is described in the first chapter and I knew after reading it I was going to love this book.
One of my favorite things about the book is the actual existence of the angels, daemons and devils. They eventually join in on earth and they each have their own personalities and mannerisms. The angels are indifferent, slightly insane and just want to stare at shiny things and stare at the sun, when they get upset they burn things. In short they are the small children of the celestial world. The devils are Gods jailers and are sticklers for rules and organization, at lower levels horribly unimaginative at higher levels interested in politics and one upmanship. The Daemons are on the side of lucifer and effectively renegade angels and devils, they are the least represented of the celestial beings, hopefully we will get to see the more in the future books. Some of the trips to hell and the POV celestial characters were my favourite parts of the book, it seems that Mark Alder had great fun writing these bits and it definitely comes through with the characters and locations.
Needless to say with the court relationships, families and history of really thirteenth century Europe are complex with ties, grudges and alliances going back years. This can make starting the book quite complex until you understand them. Fortunately this is Europe not Westeros so there's no need for large appendices and half remembered facts from 200 pages ago, there's Wikipedia for all that.
Son of the Morning says it's perfect for fans of Bernard Cornwell and Geroge R R Martin and that's true but it's definitely more Martin than Cornwell. That said I'd recommend it to anyone with an interest in history or fantasy. Son of the Morning a great read and there plenty in there for any fan of the genre to enjoy. It doesn't take itself too seriously and is a great romp through medieval Europe, hell and everywhere in between. I for one will be looking forward to the (hopeful) continuation of the series.
September 23, 2018
This is a looooong book. It's billed as an epic in the style of George RR Martin but I've read his and they really didn't feel as long as this. Epic is definitely the right word.
Overall though it's not a bad book. It's has some good characters in it and I liked the mix of 'real world' and mythological ones. There's some great world building in here and it's a great premise. Just for me a little bit too long and unwieldy.
Overall though it's not a bad book. It's has some good characters in it and I liked the mix of 'real world' and mythological ones. There's some great world building in here and it's a great premise. Just for me a little bit too long and unwieldy.
June 15, 2016
What if the outcome of battles in a war rested on the intervention of angels or demons? What if angels weren’t the benevolent spirits they are depicted but guardians of a hierarchical system defined by Heaven and replicated on earth? What if devils are actually prison guards for Heaven keeping demons locked up? What if the reason demons must be locked up is that they wish to help the poor overthrow those hierarchical systems on earth? What if Edward III, faced with the fact that Heaven doesn’t see him as the rightful ruler of Great Britain and chooses to throw all of the weight of angels behind France, is offered the support of demons that have managed to elude their guards and escaped from Hell? What if angels can be killed? Those and many more issues are raised in Son of the Morning by author Mark Alder in this epic alternate historical fantasy set at the beginning of the Hundred Years War.
This is a fairly long book (well over 600 pgs at least on my Kobo) told from a great many points of view including those of some of Hell’s denizen’s. Despite its length, this felt very much like the first in a series which, in fact, it is. It introduces us to seemingly dozens of characters, some actual historical figures and some fictional, some very complex world-building, again some based on history and some not, including a foray into Hell, as well as an intricate theological system and concomitant heresies that are very much a part of the story and which interestingly enough reflect many of the beliefs at a time marked by the declining authority of the Church, some of which some Christians might find offensive. Unfortunately, although much of this was interesting, there were places where it seemed a bit draggy and, at others, somewhat confusing as it moves back and forth between characters, events, and places.
Overall, though I found the book compelling and, if at times, I found it confusing, the story kept me interested enough that, even when it was a bit slow, I always found myself wanting to read further to see what would happen and how all of the spiritual beings would continue to fit into the narrative. I am definitely looking forward to reading the next in the series and would recommend this to anyone who enjoys historical fantasies.
3.5
I received this book from Edelweiss and the publisher in exchange for an honest review
This is a fairly long book (well over 600 pgs at least on my Kobo) told from a great many points of view including those of some of Hell’s denizen’s. Despite its length, this felt very much like the first in a series which, in fact, it is. It introduces us to seemingly dozens of characters, some actual historical figures and some fictional, some very complex world-building, again some based on history and some not, including a foray into Hell, as well as an intricate theological system and concomitant heresies that are very much a part of the story and which interestingly enough reflect many of the beliefs at a time marked by the declining authority of the Church, some of which some Christians might find offensive. Unfortunately, although much of this was interesting, there were places where it seemed a bit draggy and, at others, somewhat confusing as it moves back and forth between characters, events, and places.
Overall, though I found the book compelling and, if at times, I found it confusing, the story kept me interested enough that, even when it was a bit slow, I always found myself wanting to read further to see what would happen and how all of the spiritual beings would continue to fit into the narrative. I am definitely looking forward to reading the next in the series and would recommend this to anyone who enjoys historical fantasies.
3.5
I received this book from Edelweiss and the publisher in exchange for an honest review
March 20, 2014
More of a 4.5 stars – it didn’t quite blow me away completely (which may have been my fault of course as I’ll explain in a bit) but all the same it was great – a grand achievement built on a stunning premise.
In hindsight the best premises are often incredibly obvious and simple so you can’t quite work out why someone’s not done it before – and that’s certainly the case here. From the simple basis of god & angels being real and active participants in the world, Alder inserts that theory to medieval society of the time, with the result that you’re soon on Lucifer’s side. I fully expect that to be messed with in later books, but that’ll only add to the fun. With god appointing kings directly and every man proscribed his station in life there’s a lot of world building to do for a historical novel, but it’s all convincing in a way you don’t get with authors who seem to be almost slumming it in fantasy.
My only issue was a slight staccato feeling to the novel. Most of it’s great and a highly entertaining read, with some lovely descriptive images especially when the angels appear – not too staid despite the efforts of Montagu among others to keep their thinking rigidly appropriate to their station – but we’re spanning a good few years, have a lot of detail and POV characters to follow so it bounces around a fair bit. That effect wasn’t helped by me needing to pause 1/3 the way through and proofread my own book so that might have added to the disconnect, but a lot of the characters felt a shade remote for a large chunk of the book. How you’d tell the story with a smaller list of principals I don’t know and it can’t have dissatisfied me that much because I never found myself rewriting the plot as I read, which is usually the sign something’s bugging me. For a pretty long book it doesn’t read like that and especially with the short chapters I really got to race through it, there’s drama and silliness both in healthy measures and I’m certainly looking forward to the next in the series!
In hindsight the best premises are often incredibly obvious and simple so you can’t quite work out why someone’s not done it before – and that’s certainly the case here. From the simple basis of god & angels being real and active participants in the world, Alder inserts that theory to medieval society of the time, with the result that you’re soon on Lucifer’s side. I fully expect that to be messed with in later books, but that’ll only add to the fun. With god appointing kings directly and every man proscribed his station in life there’s a lot of world building to do for a historical novel, but it’s all convincing in a way you don’t get with authors who seem to be almost slumming it in fantasy.
My only issue was a slight staccato feeling to the novel. Most of it’s great and a highly entertaining read, with some lovely descriptive images especially when the angels appear – not too staid despite the efforts of Montagu among others to keep their thinking rigidly appropriate to their station – but we’re spanning a good few years, have a lot of detail and POV characters to follow so it bounces around a fair bit. That effect wasn’t helped by me needing to pause 1/3 the way through and proofread my own book so that might have added to the disconnect, but a lot of the characters felt a shade remote for a large chunk of the book. How you’d tell the story with a smaller list of principals I don’t know and it can’t have dissatisfied me that much because I never found myself rewriting the plot as I read, which is usually the sign something’s bugging me. For a pretty long book it doesn’t read like that and especially with the short chapters I really got to race through it, there’s drama and silliness both in healthy measures and I’m certainly looking forward to the next in the series!
January 9, 2015
An alternative 100 Years War set in a world where God takes a direct interest in his creation, Son of the Morning is a smart, gripping historical fantasy. Here angels dwell in cathedrals and fight for their kings. Adler’s is not a kindly God, but an unforgiving, Old Testament smiter who relishes sacrifice and casts people into Hell for the least of sins.
Adler’s taken the Luciferian heresy as the starting point for Son of The Morning – God usurped Lucifer, the true creator, and imprisoned him and his followers in Hell. Lucifer came to Earth as Jesus, and God took all the credit. God then did a savage PR job on the fallen angel, and the rest, as they say, is history. Lucifer and his demons have taken control of part of Hell, throwing back Satan’s devils. This war spills onto Earth with the advent of the “antichrist”.
Despite first appearances, the book is not a Christian-bashing polemic, but a sharp attack on inequality as applicable to the wild inequities of today’s super capitalism as it is to Feudalism’s self-justification through Christianity. If that sounds a bit heavy, trust us, it isn’t. There’s a great deal of humour, well-observed characters, glorious occult and historical detail, plenty of intrigue, and great battles. Adler’s depiction of Crecy, with both sides supported by angels and devils, is particularly enjoyable.
Adler’s taken the Luciferian heresy as the starting point for Son of The Morning – God usurped Lucifer, the true creator, and imprisoned him and his followers in Hell. Lucifer came to Earth as Jesus, and God took all the credit. God then did a savage PR job on the fallen angel, and the rest, as they say, is history. Lucifer and his demons have taken control of part of Hell, throwing back Satan’s devils. This war spills onto Earth with the advent of the “antichrist”.
Despite first appearances, the book is not a Christian-bashing polemic, but a sharp attack on inequality as applicable to the wild inequities of today’s super capitalism as it is to Feudalism’s self-justification through Christianity. If that sounds a bit heavy, trust us, it isn’t. There’s a great deal of humour, well-observed characters, glorious occult and historical detail, plenty of intrigue, and great battles. Adler’s depiction of Crecy, with both sides supported by angels and devils, is particularly enjoyable.
February 21, 2015
I first discovered the fantasy genre when I picked up Lord of the Rings in the school library. I was twelve years old, and trying my best to avoid the bullies who’d been the bane of my existence since I was ten. The library was my favourite hiding place: they could find me in there, but they wouldn’t be able to cause trouble because of the inviolate rule of silence while in the library, and there was always a librarian there who could report them to the teachers if they did anything. Of course, there were other places I could have hidden (near the convent was a good spot; the school I attended was run by nuns, and it was a well-enforced silent rule that one did not cause trouble near their convent, lest Mother Superior hear about it and make things especially difficult for the troublemaker), but the library had books, and books were always a good thing.
At any rate, reading Lord of the Rings has pretty much informed the things I look for before I can consider any work “good”, whatever its genre might be. One of the big things is world-building: Lord of the Rings is famous and influential for its world-building, and the richness and depth of Middle-Earth is both a goal to be reached and an example to aspire to for many fantasy and sci-fi writers. I feel the same way as well, though that appreciation has been tweaked over the years: while I appreciate a writer who can create a world with the same depth and breadth as Tolkien’s, what matters more is that the world is solid enough for it to provide both foundation and backdrop for everything else in the novel. Every writer has their own way of going about that; it’s not necessary for them to go to the lengths Tolkien did (though I can appreciate that kind of dedication).
Of course, other things matter slightly more than world-building: great characters, for example, can make up for a world that’s mostly sketched-in, especially when paired with a great plot and exquisite themes. But when the characters are bland, the plot so-so and the themes nothing really new, then world-building has a greater influence on whether or not I think a book is at least readable. And when a book doesn’t even have that, then it can make for a very frustrating read indeed.
This is the case with Mark Alder’s Son of the Morning, the first book in his Banners of Blood series. Set at the beginning of the Hundred Years’ War, King Edward III of England and King Philip VI of France war against each other in an attempt to gain control of the throne of France. None of this is new to anyone who is familiar with this particular part of history, or has easy access to Wikipedia. Alder’s take on it, however, is different. In his version of history, both sides have access to supernatural forces: angels, who are housed in the glorious cathedrals built during this period, can fight for any given side—if they can be convinced to do so. And if there are angels, it stands to reason that there are also more unholy entities with which one can make alliances, if one is willing to pay the price. And it is a price Edward may be willing to pay, no matter the cost.
Now, on the surface, this book is something I should find appealing—and in fact, based on the official blurb alone, I was thoroughly excited to read it. I enjoy alternate history a great deal, especially any sort of alternate history set before the Industrial Revolution, and because Alder chose to set his novel during the Hundred Years’ War, that just made the idea of reading Son of the Morning even better. But what really sweetened the deal was the whole idea of angels going to war against each other for the sake of two different countries. I imagined that Alder would have built a fantastic scaffolding for that concept, not least because the idea itself would mean tweaking previous history before the start of the Hundred Years’ War in order to make sure it accommodates the concept of kings being able to summon the forces of heaven or hell for their own benefit.
However, that’s not what happens in Son of the Morning. Instead of a firm stage on which the characters may grow and the plot may unfold, the world-building feels like nothing more than a sheet draped over the scaffolding of history. Indeed, I’ve built sturdier blanket forts than the world-building done for this novel, and that’s saying something, as most of the blanket forts I’ve built in my childhood were very flimsy constructions indeed.
It surprises me, therefore, to see comparisons being drawn between this novel and George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series. I feel the comparison is justified only insofar as Martin based the political machinations and some of his characters upon the events and certain personages who participated in some of the more pivotal events of the Hundred Years’ War—Martin himself has stated in interviews that he drew a lot of inspiration from that period of history in the writing of his series. However, unlike Son of the Morning, Martin’s vision of Westeros is rich and robust: it has a deep history, one that lies underneath the conflict depicted in the novels’ present, and which influences characters and plot movement alike. To be sure, Martin doesn’t give his readers the whole picture, and leaves much for them to infer on their own, but at the very least one gets a sense of a world that is not only alive, but has a history all its own.
The same absolutely cannot be said of Son of the Morning. The only explanation the reader gets about how this whole system of angels, devils, and demons work—and yes, the latter two are very different from each other—is the prologue, which explains the book’s cosmology, after which the reader is left on their own to understand how the world works.
Now, I am the very last person to complain about being made to sink or swim by a writer: in fact, I appreciate a writer who’s confident enough to do that to their readers, to trust in their readers’ intelligence to figure things out on their own. However, I’ve noted that most writers who excel at doing that kind of thing are also the writers who are very good at building their world around and through their characters, for instance, or using the plot effectively, or working around grand overarching themes.
Alder doesn’t manage to do any of that at all. The events leading up to the Hundred Years’ War are rich in potential scaffolding, to say nothing of the history and mythology surrounding the medieval understanding of heaven and hell and their respective hierarchies and entities, but he doesn’t appear to take advantage of any of that at all. For example, I kept wondering: what of the Jews, what of the Muslims? They too had a long history of angelic and demonic magic; where are they in all of this? If Alder was drawing upon medieval angelology and demonology to shape his world-building, why does he not draw upon Jewish and Islamic sources, which formed the core of Christian angelology and demonology in the first place? Why no Muslim sorcerers? Why no Jewish Qabalistic masters?
I understand that the Hundred Years’ War was a European conflict, but when one is playing around with religious mythology, particularly Abrahamic religious mythology, then it stands to reason that one cannot simply focus on Europe alone; one must also address Judaism and Islam and understand how they fit into the picture—not least because there were Jewish populations in every major European city at the time, and the Muslims were still a power to be reckoned with from their home base in Spain. Addressing that would be just one way of building a stronger foundation for the world-building of this novel, for getting the reader to understand and, more importantly, accept that it all really can work.
Sadly, that is not what the reader gets. The legend in the prologue is, suspiciously, presented as an exclusively Christian legend, one that bears no references to the Islamic or even Jewish traditions. Such a legend—especially since it concerns a God and a religious hierarchy shared by three major world religions—cannot have come into existence as an exclusively Christian legend in a world where Islam and Judaism both exist as well (Judaism’s existence is implied by the fact that Christianity exists; Islam’s existence is implied by a brief mention of a minor character fighting Moors in Spain). Alder had a chance to truly give the legend, and consequently his world, a certain amount of depth, but he doesn’t take that chance at all. The reader is told to accept that it is there, and that it works, instead of being shown that it works through the characters and the plot.
Perhaps because of the sheer weakness of the world-building, the characters aren’t interesting, either. Alder deals with some of the most notable personages of the period, but they don’t strike one as being very vivid. For that matter, the original characters don’t strike one as being very interesting, either. There is something of the caricature about all of them, which is deplorable at the worst (not least when it comes to writing about the female characters, like Queen Isabella and Joan of Navarre), and irritating at the least. None of them feels organic, or subtle, or really, like an actual thinking, feeling person. In many cases they feel like nothing more than vehicles for delivering aphorisms about class and faith and duty and a whole lot of other themes that I know could and should be tackled in a novel with a concept like what Son of the Morning is built around, but character should do more than just make clever observations about the state of the world around them.
As for the plot, it’s obvious that it’s meant to be epic, but the way it’s been handled is less than stellar. The world-building does nothing for it, nor do the characters, so the whole thing plods along even though I know, in the back of my head, that it has all the capacity of moving forward at a nice, comfortable clip. There are some battles that I suppose are meant to be epic, but most of them feel rather ho-hum save for the battle at the end—but since that’s essentially the Battle of Crecy, one of the most important English victories of the Hundred Years’ War (along with the Battles of Poitiers and Agincourt), I don’t think that counts. Of course, epic battles aren’t an absolute necessity for a good fantasy novel, but when one reads of battle scenes that try so very hard to be epic, and fail at it, then it can be difficult to just let them go without remarking upon them.
The plot also has a terrible tendency to jerk around and jump from one point-of-view character to another. This isn’t all that bad a thing, as many writers do this, but writers who do it well have a very tight grasp of these changes in point-of-view, managing to do so smoothly and without jarring the reader too much. That’s not the case in Son of the Morning, where the narrative shifts feel like being jolted around in the back of a hay cart on a bumpy road, before the invention of suspension springs. That’s partly the reason why it took me so long to finish this novel: I’d reach a certain threshold wherein I’d get tired of being jolted around, and would put it aside in favour of reading something with a smoother narrative.
Overall, Son of the Morning is an irritating, frustrating read, and I sometimes wonder why I spent so much time on it. However, I knew I wouldn’t be able to actually write a proper review about it unless I finished it, which is the same reason why I finished To Your Scattered Bodies Go, even if I disliked that book immensely. I wanted to be able to write intelligently about Son of the Morning, to be able to point out precisely what I so dislike about t, and I couldn’t do that without finishing it. The only thing that prevents me from completely scorning Son of the Morning is what drew me to it in the first place: its concept. It was also the concept that kept me going through the rest of the novel, despite my frustrations, and that, I suppose, is something.
However, it takes more than just an interesting concept to make a book readable, much less good, and sadly, Son of the Morning is very definitely not good.
At any rate, reading Lord of the Rings has pretty much informed the things I look for before I can consider any work “good”, whatever its genre might be. One of the big things is world-building: Lord of the Rings is famous and influential for its world-building, and the richness and depth of Middle-Earth is both a goal to be reached and an example to aspire to for many fantasy and sci-fi writers. I feel the same way as well, though that appreciation has been tweaked over the years: while I appreciate a writer who can create a world with the same depth and breadth as Tolkien’s, what matters more is that the world is solid enough for it to provide both foundation and backdrop for everything else in the novel. Every writer has their own way of going about that; it’s not necessary for them to go to the lengths Tolkien did (though I can appreciate that kind of dedication).
Of course, other things matter slightly more than world-building: great characters, for example, can make up for a world that’s mostly sketched-in, especially when paired with a great plot and exquisite themes. But when the characters are bland, the plot so-so and the themes nothing really new, then world-building has a greater influence on whether or not I think a book is at least readable. And when a book doesn’t even have that, then it can make for a very frustrating read indeed.
This is the case with Mark Alder’s Son of the Morning, the first book in his Banners of Blood series. Set at the beginning of the Hundred Years’ War, King Edward III of England and King Philip VI of France war against each other in an attempt to gain control of the throne of France. None of this is new to anyone who is familiar with this particular part of history, or has easy access to Wikipedia. Alder’s take on it, however, is different. In his version of history, both sides have access to supernatural forces: angels, who are housed in the glorious cathedrals built during this period, can fight for any given side—if they can be convinced to do so. And if there are angels, it stands to reason that there are also more unholy entities with which one can make alliances, if one is willing to pay the price. And it is a price Edward may be willing to pay, no matter the cost.
Now, on the surface, this book is something I should find appealing—and in fact, based on the official blurb alone, I was thoroughly excited to read it. I enjoy alternate history a great deal, especially any sort of alternate history set before the Industrial Revolution, and because Alder chose to set his novel during the Hundred Years’ War, that just made the idea of reading Son of the Morning even better. But what really sweetened the deal was the whole idea of angels going to war against each other for the sake of two different countries. I imagined that Alder would have built a fantastic scaffolding for that concept, not least because the idea itself would mean tweaking previous history before the start of the Hundred Years’ War in order to make sure it accommodates the concept of kings being able to summon the forces of heaven or hell for their own benefit.
However, that’s not what happens in Son of the Morning. Instead of a firm stage on which the characters may grow and the plot may unfold, the world-building feels like nothing more than a sheet draped over the scaffolding of history. Indeed, I’ve built sturdier blanket forts than the world-building done for this novel, and that’s saying something, as most of the blanket forts I’ve built in my childhood were very flimsy constructions indeed.
It surprises me, therefore, to see comparisons being drawn between this novel and George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series. I feel the comparison is justified only insofar as Martin based the political machinations and some of his characters upon the events and certain personages who participated in some of the more pivotal events of the Hundred Years’ War—Martin himself has stated in interviews that he drew a lot of inspiration from that period of history in the writing of his series. However, unlike Son of the Morning, Martin’s vision of Westeros is rich and robust: it has a deep history, one that lies underneath the conflict depicted in the novels’ present, and which influences characters and plot movement alike. To be sure, Martin doesn’t give his readers the whole picture, and leaves much for them to infer on their own, but at the very least one gets a sense of a world that is not only alive, but has a history all its own.
The same absolutely cannot be said of Son of the Morning. The only explanation the reader gets about how this whole system of angels, devils, and demons work—and yes, the latter two are very different from each other—is the prologue, which explains the book’s cosmology, after which the reader is left on their own to understand how the world works.
Now, I am the very last person to complain about being made to sink or swim by a writer: in fact, I appreciate a writer who’s confident enough to do that to their readers, to trust in their readers’ intelligence to figure things out on their own. However, I’ve noted that most writers who excel at doing that kind of thing are also the writers who are very good at building their world around and through their characters, for instance, or using the plot effectively, or working around grand overarching themes.
Alder doesn’t manage to do any of that at all. The events leading up to the Hundred Years’ War are rich in potential scaffolding, to say nothing of the history and mythology surrounding the medieval understanding of heaven and hell and their respective hierarchies and entities, but he doesn’t appear to take advantage of any of that at all. For example, I kept wondering: what of the Jews, what of the Muslims? They too had a long history of angelic and demonic magic; where are they in all of this? If Alder was drawing upon medieval angelology and demonology to shape his world-building, why does he not draw upon Jewish and Islamic sources, which formed the core of Christian angelology and demonology in the first place? Why no Muslim sorcerers? Why no Jewish Qabalistic masters?
I understand that the Hundred Years’ War was a European conflict, but when one is playing around with religious mythology, particularly Abrahamic religious mythology, then it stands to reason that one cannot simply focus on Europe alone; one must also address Judaism and Islam and understand how they fit into the picture—not least because there were Jewish populations in every major European city at the time, and the Muslims were still a power to be reckoned with from their home base in Spain. Addressing that would be just one way of building a stronger foundation for the world-building of this novel, for getting the reader to understand and, more importantly, accept that it all really can work.
Sadly, that is not what the reader gets. The legend in the prologue is, suspiciously, presented as an exclusively Christian legend, one that bears no references to the Islamic or even Jewish traditions. Such a legend—especially since it concerns a God and a religious hierarchy shared by three major world religions—cannot have come into existence as an exclusively Christian legend in a world where Islam and Judaism both exist as well (Judaism’s existence is implied by the fact that Christianity exists; Islam’s existence is implied by a brief mention of a minor character fighting Moors in Spain). Alder had a chance to truly give the legend, and consequently his world, a certain amount of depth, but he doesn’t take that chance at all. The reader is told to accept that it is there, and that it works, instead of being shown that it works through the characters and the plot.
Perhaps because of the sheer weakness of the world-building, the characters aren’t interesting, either. Alder deals with some of the most notable personages of the period, but they don’t strike one as being very vivid. For that matter, the original characters don’t strike one as being very interesting, either. There is something of the caricature about all of them, which is deplorable at the worst (not least when it comes to writing about the female characters, like Queen Isabella and Joan of Navarre), and irritating at the least. None of them feels organic, or subtle, or really, like an actual thinking, feeling person. In many cases they feel like nothing more than vehicles for delivering aphorisms about class and faith and duty and a whole lot of other themes that I know could and should be tackled in a novel with a concept like what Son of the Morning is built around, but character should do more than just make clever observations about the state of the world around them.
As for the plot, it’s obvious that it’s meant to be epic, but the way it’s been handled is less than stellar. The world-building does nothing for it, nor do the characters, so the whole thing plods along even though I know, in the back of my head, that it has all the capacity of moving forward at a nice, comfortable clip. There are some battles that I suppose are meant to be epic, but most of them feel rather ho-hum save for the battle at the end—but since that’s essentially the Battle of Crecy, one of the most important English victories of the Hundred Years’ War (along with the Battles of Poitiers and Agincourt), I don’t think that counts. Of course, epic battles aren’t an absolute necessity for a good fantasy novel, but when one reads of battle scenes that try so very hard to be epic, and fail at it, then it can be difficult to just let them go without remarking upon them.
The plot also has a terrible tendency to jerk around and jump from one point-of-view character to another. This isn’t all that bad a thing, as many writers do this, but writers who do it well have a very tight grasp of these changes in point-of-view, managing to do so smoothly and without jarring the reader too much. That’s not the case in Son of the Morning, where the narrative shifts feel like being jolted around in the back of a hay cart on a bumpy road, before the invention of suspension springs. That’s partly the reason why it took me so long to finish this novel: I’d reach a certain threshold wherein I’d get tired of being jolted around, and would put it aside in favour of reading something with a smoother narrative.
Overall, Son of the Morning is an irritating, frustrating read, and I sometimes wonder why I spent so much time on it. However, I knew I wouldn’t be able to actually write a proper review about it unless I finished it, which is the same reason why I finished To Your Scattered Bodies Go, even if I disliked that book immensely. I wanted to be able to write intelligently about Son of the Morning, to be able to point out precisely what I so dislike about t, and I couldn’t do that without finishing it. The only thing that prevents me from completely scorning Son of the Morning is what drew me to it in the first place: its concept. It was also the concept that kept me going through the rest of the novel, despite my frustrations, and that, I suppose, is something.
However, it takes more than just an interesting concept to make a book readable, much less good, and sadly, Son of the Morning is very definitely not good.
July 17, 2015
Well i don't know how to start this review. Although i've read my fair share of books and also being new to goodreads, I rarely write reviews. As a matter of fact this is my first review. Most often I'm just too lazy to write a review. So i can say that Son of the Morning has moved me enough for me to write one. Being a strong catholic, this book was a shocker for me at first. Well not that big a catholic but I still try my best to stay true to my religion. Being brought up in a family of two religions (my parents being of different religions) I was always told to see that every religion had some good in it and to respect them. But both my parents are against the concept of Lucifer and I've been brought up to stay clear of anything against Roman Catholicism. Also spending all my school life (15 years that is) in a convent based girls-only school makes matters worse. So one can just imagine my thoughts when i first started the book. My first instinct was to stop reading the book and hide it somewhere far deep in my bookshelf but something just made me keep reading t. It maybe my love for anything historical but i would ultimately tell it was the superb writing of the author. For anyone who had second thoughts like me to keep the book away cuz of your religion (though it might sound stupid to some people, it is quiet normal in my culture to do so), i say take your chances and read it because you would not regret it. It might also come as a challenge to those who have learned English as a secondary language (in my case, English is my third language) to read such a long book (731 pages) but still like I mentioned take your chances.
I would like to say that without a doubt this is one of the best books i've read this year so far. My tastes normally are more towards romance but this book had me hooked from the first chapter. I would sometimes re-read a chapter afraid of missing even a bit of it. It had me that hooked. The book mainly tells about the Medieval Period during which the Black Death spreads. The use of real life characters and mixing them up with celestial creatures and putting a good dash of fantasy into it was just pure awesomeness I would say.The way that one chapter would be connected to another in like few more chapters ahead would keep the reader always on the edge waiting for it. The way even the tiniest detail would be explained and that even the slightest sentence would not wasted (maybe i'm exaggerating a bit :P) was just pure awesome for me. Like i told before the use of the Antichrist theory in the beginning had me faltering for a second i pushed through somehow. Angels were shown to be a bit of vain creatures who stay only in places where riches are full. The more the riches, the more stronger the angel. I would strongly tell people like me (religious people) to put aside biased thoughts and read this book open mindedly as it is one of the must read this season. I will not further go into this because i'm partly scared I'l leave spoilers so i shall stop here. Also as this is my review (which i've told plenty of times) I guess i shouldn't go further.
I hope this review hasn't been a complete failure or waste but I wrote even with a few grammatical errors here and there i think, was because Son of the Morning completely deserves one. I'l be patiently waiting for the second book of this and i hope and wish that it would be just as delightful as the first. Thank you so much Mark Alders for writing such a great book and also for giving me a chance to write a review. Once again garden my grammar and also if my review wasn't good enough.
I would like to say that without a doubt this is one of the best books i've read this year so far. My tastes normally are more towards romance but this book had me hooked from the first chapter. I would sometimes re-read a chapter afraid of missing even a bit of it. It had me that hooked. The book mainly tells about the Medieval Period during which the Black Death spreads. The use of real life characters and mixing them up with celestial creatures and putting a good dash of fantasy into it was just pure awesomeness I would say.The way that one chapter would be connected to another in like few more chapters ahead would keep the reader always on the edge waiting for it. The way even the tiniest detail would be explained and that even the slightest sentence would not wasted (maybe i'm exaggerating a bit :P) was just pure awesome for me. Like i told before the use of the Antichrist theory in the beginning had me faltering for a second i pushed through somehow. Angels were shown to be a bit of vain creatures who stay only in places where riches are full. The more the riches, the more stronger the angel. I would strongly tell people like me (religious people) to put aside biased thoughts and read this book open mindedly as it is one of the must read this season. I will not further go into this because i'm partly scared I'l leave spoilers so i shall stop here. Also as this is my review (which i've told plenty of times) I guess i shouldn't go further.
I hope this review hasn't been a complete failure or waste but I wrote even with a few grammatical errors here and there i think, was because Son of the Morning completely deserves one. I'l be patiently waiting for the second book of this and i hope and wish that it would be just as delightful as the first. Thank you so much Mark Alders for writing such a great book and also for giving me a chance to write a review. Once again garden my grammar and also if my review wasn't good enough.
February 5, 2015
Historical fantasy, but never once felt like I was in the middle of a history lesson. A detailed and fascinating look into an alternate past, where demons and angels inhabit the world, and the tales of the Bible aren’t quite the same as those I heard at school. Sharp and brutal, sometimes funny, filled with monsters and magic and a great cast, Son of the Morning is a fine piece of entertainment.
July 29, 2015
Calling time on this one even though I am only three quarters of the way through it.
I absolutely cannot force myself to finish this book. While the writing is capable, the characters are flat and dull and I find myself completely uninterested in what they do, or what happens to them.
The concept is not unappealing but has sadly been articulated in the most tedious way possible.
I absolutely cannot force myself to finish this book. While the writing is capable, the characters are flat and dull and I find myself completely uninterested in what they do, or what happens to them.
The concept is not unappealing but has sadly been articulated in the most tedious way possible.
January 3, 2018
I'm a bit gobsmacked. This is an extraordinary book, one that fully immerses you in a great cauldron of medieval stew, seasoned with superstitions and spiced with demons. Not a fast read but, with a book like this, you want to take all the time you can.
January 3, 2026
I would probably have enjoyed this more if it had been a single self-contained volume that came to a resonant end. I'm not sure I'm invested enough to go off and look for more volumes in a series, although the initial idea struck me as an interesting counterfactual take on the history/religion of the Middle Ages.
The author does a good job of making all the viewpoint characters sympathetic from their own perspectives, even though they may despise one another and behave in ways that are far from objectively admirable. I felt that he tries too hard in the constant emphasis on 'high/low men'; yes, it's a good thing that he is showing the very real social assumptions and class distinctions of the era, but it should be natural and unthinking to the characters, at least after the first few repetitions, and he keeps hammering the point home rather self-consciously. There were also some weird choices of 'mediaevalised spellings' in isolation for no good reason: why the rank of Marschall and not Marshal, and stewes and not stews as the name for a brothel district? And spelling the famous Gropecunt Lane in Cheapside as Gropqwente seems an unnecessary affectation, or possibly euphemism...
I'm afraid I did have difficulty keeping the important theological distinction between demons and devils clear in my mind, which is unfortunate as it is a major part of the plot! Basically this is an alternate history of the Hundred Years War with an alternate religion mixed in, where rival nations compete to attract angels to their cathedrals by building ever more splendid structures, then use the angels' power as a weapon of war. Meanwhile there is a rival heresy (which eventually turns out to be literally true) holding that Lucifer and Christ are the same person, and Lucifer and Satan are two different people, with the latter holding the former prisoner in Hell.
The Luciferians are basically anarchists who believe that the feudal structure, generally held to be ordained by God, should be pulled down as part of their rejection of established religion, which makes them not only heretical but socially dangerous, like the 17th century Levellers. And our main protagonist turns out to be literally the Antichrist, which is an unusual choice of hero!
Meanwhile the English angels have all disappeared, which leaves England very vulnerable in times of war, and turns out to be linked to supernatural events around the overthrow of Edward II - who, in an unexpected twist, may not have been killed after being deposed after all but could be still alive in captivity somewhere, creating a serious moral dilemma for the son who has now reclaimed his father's throne... There is a lot of material here, and probably with hindsight too much. The book starts to get more overtly fantastical towards the end, with all sorts of magic powers and creatures on display, and it all gets a bit overwhelming.
The author does a good job of making all the viewpoint characters sympathetic from their own perspectives, even though they may despise one another and behave in ways that are far from objectively admirable. I felt that he tries too hard in the constant emphasis on 'high/low men'; yes, it's a good thing that he is showing the very real social assumptions and class distinctions of the era, but it should be natural and unthinking to the characters, at least after the first few repetitions, and he keeps hammering the point home rather self-consciously. There were also some weird choices of 'mediaevalised spellings' in isolation for no good reason: why the rank of Marschall and not Marshal, and stewes and not stews as the name for a brothel district? And spelling the famous Gropecunt Lane in Cheapside as Gropqwente seems an unnecessary affectation, or possibly euphemism...
I'm afraid I did have difficulty keeping the important theological distinction between demons and devils clear in my mind, which is unfortunate as it is a major part of the plot! Basically this is an alternate history of the Hundred Years War with an alternate religion mixed in, where rival nations compete to attract angels to their cathedrals by building ever more splendid structures, then use the angels' power as a weapon of war. Meanwhile there is a rival heresy (which eventually turns out to be literally true) holding that Lucifer and Christ are the same person, and Lucifer and Satan are two different people, with the latter holding the former prisoner in Hell.
The Luciferians are basically anarchists who believe that the feudal structure, generally held to be ordained by God, should be pulled down as part of their rejection of established religion, which makes them not only heretical but socially dangerous, like the 17th century Levellers. And our main protagonist turns out to be literally the Antichrist, which is an unusual choice of hero!
Meanwhile the English angels have all disappeared, which leaves England very vulnerable in times of war, and turns out to be linked to supernatural events around the overthrow of Edward II - who, in an unexpected twist, may not have been killed after being deposed after all but could be still alive in captivity somewhere, creating a serious moral dilemma for the son who has now reclaimed his father's throne... There is a lot of material here, and probably with hindsight too much. The book starts to get more overtly fantastical towards the end, with all sorts of magic powers and creatures on display, and it all gets a bit overwhelming.
May 12, 2014
Probably a 3.8. The pacing was uneven for the first half, but the second half and end improved enough for me to definitely plan on reading the sequel.
http://abitterdraft.com/2014/05/promi...
http://abitterdraft.com/2014/05/promi...
September 16, 2020
This was not at all what I was expecting. I settled in for some historical fiction, Hundred Years War, Battle of Crecy etc with some moral anguish and our heroes angsting heroically as the forces of Heaven and Hell battled it out for the souls of kings and the fate of Western Europe.
What I got was largely awful people being monstrous to each other in God's name, as people have been doing for centuries, excusing any atrocity if they can find a priest to cry "God wills it!" (for example, see the Crusades). But this awfulness is seasoned with politics, betrayal, honour, self-interest and moments of quite stunning loveliness scattered with the most absurd, almost Monty Pythonesque humour. I mean imagine a dying man telling the chap who's killing him to please pass his regards to the killer's lady wife, who had been so nice to the victim's daughters on their last visit. I snort-laughed out loud at several points.
The end result is a joyous, blood-soaked adventure which takes its time setting up its pieces and just when you think it's going to be solemn and dark, hits the first turn for the absurd and you wonder what on earth is going on. But by then the story's got hold of you. You learn to roll with the absurd, as the office politics of Heaven and Hell are played out on the battlefields of France and you become sort of numb to the horrors of folk butchering angels and drinking their blood like health potions in a video game. Then the final part begins and the brakes come off for a headlong charge to Crecy full of colour and movement like a tournament's grand melee, leaving you exhausted when you turn the final page.
Up to about halfway through I wasn't sure how I was going to review this book. I wasn't even sure if I was enjoying it. But when it gets rolling there's this point you get swept up and along then you're going too fast to stop. It's like a rollercoaster in that you feel sick and scared the whole time but once it's over you say "That was brilliant."
What I got was largely awful people being monstrous to each other in God's name, as people have been doing for centuries, excusing any atrocity if they can find a priest to cry "God wills it!" (for example, see the Crusades). But this awfulness is seasoned with politics, betrayal, honour, self-interest and moments of quite stunning loveliness scattered with the most absurd, almost Monty Pythonesque humour. I mean imagine a dying man telling the chap who's killing him to please pass his regards to the killer's lady wife, who had been so nice to the victim's daughters on their last visit. I snort-laughed out loud at several points.
The end result is a joyous, blood-soaked adventure which takes its time setting up its pieces and just when you think it's going to be solemn and dark, hits the first turn for the absurd and you wonder what on earth is going on. But by then the story's got hold of you. You learn to roll with the absurd, as the office politics of Heaven and Hell are played out on the battlefields of France and you become sort of numb to the horrors of folk butchering angels and drinking their blood like health potions in a video game. Then the final part begins and the brakes come off for a headlong charge to Crecy full of colour and movement like a tournament's grand melee, leaving you exhausted when you turn the final page.
Up to about halfway through I wasn't sure how I was going to review this book. I wasn't even sure if I was enjoying it. But when it gets rolling there's this point you get swept up and along then you're going too fast to stop. It's like a rollercoaster in that you feel sick and scared the whole time but once it's over you say "That was brilliant."
November 22, 2017
Full review to come!
July 21, 2019
Angels, demons, devils......I enjoyed this book immensely. It had everything I like in a good read. The storyline read smoothly and at a good pace. Very enjoyable
January 16, 2020
An interesting twist on a fantasy novel, using a semi historical setting where angels, devils and demons are real. The genuine historical references are fascinating. Ultimately, it is a little bit too long, but the prose is good enough to hold up the ambition of the plot on the whole. I
did-not-finish
August 9, 2018DNF at 160 pages. It's been sitting on my bedside table for some days. I've no intention picking it up again.
I'm dissapointed because I really wanted to love this book. It's been sitting on my shelves for years and I was close to several times last year at picking it up to read after I read Faithful and the Fallen b John Gwynne because it had some vibes being like that series. Sure I loved the angel and demon aspect. It was why I bought it, also the cover is super pretty too. But i was BORED and had issues following the majority of the cast. The only one I liked and had any idea what was going on with was Dowzabel he's not enough to read a +700 pages long book. Had the book been around 400 pages I would maybe have been able to soldier through, but not at this length.
I'm dissapointed because I really wanted to love this book. It's been sitting on my shelves for years and I was close to several times last year at picking it up to read after I read Faithful and the Fallen b John Gwynne because it had some vibes being like that series. Sure I loved the angel and demon aspect. It was why I bought it, also the cover is super pretty too. But i was BORED and had issues following the majority of the cast. The only one I liked and had any idea what was going on with was Dowzabel he's not enough to read a +700 pages long book. Had the book been around 400 pages I would maybe have been able to soldier through, but not at this length.
November 5, 2015
Maybe closer to 4,5 but at the start of the book there were very few identifiable characters to my taste. And it was pretty hard to follow all the different story strands, with all the players and the complicated medieval political situation. Still the end was very spectacular, there were some very vivid descriptions, and theological food for thought. I think this book made it easier to appreciate how different medieval thinking is to our own, the class distinctions to many not only natural but god ordained, and their view of God accordingly. And thus it can be jarring to read about a capricious God, favouring the mighty and the strong and only giving about churches and worship. There's a powerfull argument here that a God who supports war and oppresses the poor, is not God at all, but the devil. God is, as was shown in Jesus, the one who gives succour to the poor, but is the stumbling block for the rich and the powerful and self-righteous. He brings down the mighty, and his kingdom has no masters or fathers or churches, but the lamb is its light. Power is antithetical to Him, and He does not punish. He does not uphold rules that no one can keep and then delights in tormenting people for failing his demands. Us not living in the way he gave as an example are our own punishment. He will save us from that punishment if we trust in him. So yes - even if this is not a book evangelical christians will ever be comfortable to read - it strengthened my faith!
January 23, 2017
I was hooked from the start. Not quite my period as a historian but close enough and Alder really captured the feel for me with a fantasy twist.
In this alt reality angels, devils and demons are present on Earth, God is a total bastard and Lucifer is the hero, although imprisoned in 'free hell'. God is the OT fickle, bloodthirsty and vicious version who delights in setting kings against each other; Lucifer wants everyone to be equal and down throw kings. Their fight plays out against the start of the 100 years war, with Edward III fighting Philip of France.
There are more twists and turns than a twisty turny thing which was a little confusing at first but the story swept me along (it is a meaty book). Osbert stole the show but Montagu ran him a close second. I'm looking forward to book 2 which is due out mid 2017.
In this alt reality angels, devils and demons are present on Earth, God is a total bastard and Lucifer is the hero, although imprisoned in 'free hell'. God is the OT fickle, bloodthirsty and vicious version who delights in setting kings against each other; Lucifer wants everyone to be equal and down throw kings. Their fight plays out against the start of the 100 years war, with Edward III fighting Philip of France.
There are more twists and turns than a twisty turny thing which was a little confusing at first but the story swept me along (it is a meaty book). Osbert stole the show but Montagu ran him a close second. I'm looking forward to book 2 which is due out mid 2017.
November 19, 2013
One of the best historical fantasies I yet read. A convincing setting, gripping story arc and engaging characters. I can't recommend it highly enough and I hope its the start of a trilogy.
November 8, 2018
Not sure the conceit of this book makes sense on a world level but it's fun in Europe. A little too self conscious in its lolz but I enjoyed it.
August 16, 2021
“Let’s take the Hundred Years War and add heaven and hell, angels, demons and the various mythos. What’s not to like about that?”
I entered reading Son of the Morning as someone who had hardly any knowledge of the Hundred Years War. SoM seems to have been thoroughly researched – just don’t take the angels and demons and other whatnots as factual – or are they? My knowledge of angels, demons and devils are limited to the obvious knowledge. Throw in the Diablo games and having watched a bit of the TV show Supernatural that’s the extent of my theological knowledge and all the surrounding mythos.
SoM revolves around three main characters; Edward III, usurper and King of England. A fighting King and a confident one at that. King Philip of France, another usurper and then (Dowzebal) Beelzebub, the anti-Christ, a rather serious fellow if ever there was one. This is a story of Kingdoms, of authority and of the classes – the aristocracy, the poor and everything else in-between. Essentially the story has two factions, those of God and those of Lucifer. The fallen angel in this case is the good guy – while God is a trickster and a liar. I was getting increasingly concerned that the story was going to get bogged down by the religious connotations. Thankfully, this wasn’t the case, Mark Alder never gives the reader time to feel like that. As Edward motto states “It is what is is” pretty much how religion is handled in SoM. The explanations given are generally short and clipped upon this topic – so for me, it wasn’t overbearing.
So, we follow Dowzebal and his begrudging friend and tutor of all things, Edwin, the rather consumed and misguided priest. It’s all rather interesting, even St. Dow with his one-dimensional(ish) outlook does become grating after a while. However, my personal favourite, Montegu balances the story. He is the Earl of Salisbury, Edward’s close friend, aristocrat, but a fighting one. The time of chivalry is dying – the Earl accepts this, but still behoves to these sensibilities and struggles with acceptance. That is until he meets Edward’s mother, Isabella. I’m going to skirt over the reasons why – but towards the final third of the story – Montegu’s character changes completely and if I’m honest, the change is very unexpected, loose and just isn’t that believable for me.
I’ve noticed that some of the reviews I’ve read for SoM compare it to Bernard Cromwell. This confused mem as Son of the Morningis alternative history with fantasy mixed in. As I’ve mentioned, the novels seem well researched, but the Cormwell comparison is a leap in my opinion. The reason I bring this up is at times SoM struggles with identity. Why? Humour, there’s so much of it, at times I had difficulty taking individuals seriously (and on the whole they are meant to be very serious people) when they were 'trying' to be serious. Osbert can be forgiven at times, but he is one of the chief culprits. He’s a mix of Blackadder and someone else even more utterly clueless. For example, his dealings with Hugh Despenser (this takes place in Hell) is comically bad. Hugh is meant to be a very serious fellow. The reader is meant to be afraid of this brute. Not so. This happens on several occasions and I struggled to appreciate just how dire the pardoner’s situation is meant to be. There’s a distinct lack of balance to the story at times. This seems to be a writing issue and one I hope the author addresses in the next novel. However, at times, the levity and humour was funny at times – but I was asking myself - ”Is it a Medieval comedy? Medieval fantasy? Or something else?”. I mean it can be all those things, but the conflict between seriousness and humour made me feel the story was meant to be over the top with humour. I’m not sure they writer would agree.
I haven’t mentioned the angels and the demonic fellows as I’ve not wanted to spoil any surprises. The premise of it is that angels work for God (well doh!) as devils. They act as prison guards and jailors. The demons are the prisoners. Fallen angels are both good and bad. I personally liked the flame eating Nergal and Lord Sloth. On and Satan isn’t Lucifer, there two separate beings. Makes sense, right?
Son of the Morning isn’t subtle as I’ve mentioned. You’ve the class conflict (egalitarianism VS aristocracy). You’ve God as the usurper and Lucifer as the ‘surped. If either of those bother you as a concept, I’d avoid reading this. However, if you can get past those things, there’s an enjoyable (abet weird) mesh of fantasy and history here. The setting is both refreshing and appealing in a way that it kept drawing me back in. With some slight tweaking of the narrative, less over-the-top humour, Son of the Morning could be an excellent future series.
I entered reading Son of the Morning as someone who had hardly any knowledge of the Hundred Years War. SoM seems to have been thoroughly researched – just don’t take the angels and demons and other whatnots as factual – or are they? My knowledge of angels, demons and devils are limited to the obvious knowledge. Throw in the Diablo games and having watched a bit of the TV show Supernatural that’s the extent of my theological knowledge and all the surrounding mythos.
SoM revolves around three main characters; Edward III, usurper and King of England. A fighting King and a confident one at that. King Philip of France, another usurper and then (Dowzebal) Beelzebub, the anti-Christ, a rather serious fellow if ever there was one. This is a story of Kingdoms, of authority and of the classes – the aristocracy, the poor and everything else in-between. Essentially the story has two factions, those of God and those of Lucifer. The fallen angel in this case is the good guy – while God is a trickster and a liar. I was getting increasingly concerned that the story was going to get bogged down by the religious connotations. Thankfully, this wasn’t the case, Mark Alder never gives the reader time to feel like that. As Edward motto states “It is what is is” pretty much how religion is handled in SoM. The explanations given are generally short and clipped upon this topic – so for me, it wasn’t overbearing.
So, we follow Dowzebal and his begrudging friend and tutor of all things, Edwin, the rather consumed and misguided priest. It’s all rather interesting, even St. Dow with his one-dimensional(ish) outlook does become grating after a while. However, my personal favourite, Montegu balances the story. He is the Earl of Salisbury, Edward’s close friend, aristocrat, but a fighting one. The time of chivalry is dying – the Earl accepts this, but still behoves to these sensibilities and struggles with acceptance. That is until he meets Edward’s mother, Isabella. I’m going to skirt over the reasons why – but towards the final third of the story – Montegu’s character changes completely and if I’m honest, the change is very unexpected, loose and just isn’t that believable for me.
I’ve noticed that some of the reviews I’ve read for SoM compare it to Bernard Cromwell. This confused mem as Son of the Morningis alternative history with fantasy mixed in. As I’ve mentioned, the novels seem well researched, but the Cormwell comparison is a leap in my opinion. The reason I bring this up is at times SoM struggles with identity. Why? Humour, there’s so much of it, at times I had difficulty taking individuals seriously (and on the whole they are meant to be very serious people) when they were 'trying' to be serious. Osbert can be forgiven at times, but he is one of the chief culprits. He’s a mix of Blackadder and someone else even more utterly clueless. For example, his dealings with Hugh Despenser (this takes place in Hell) is comically bad. Hugh is meant to be a very serious fellow. The reader is meant to be afraid of this brute. Not so. This happens on several occasions and I struggled to appreciate just how dire the pardoner’s situation is meant to be. There’s a distinct lack of balance to the story at times. This seems to be a writing issue and one I hope the author addresses in the next novel. However, at times, the levity and humour was funny at times – but I was asking myself - ”Is it a Medieval comedy? Medieval fantasy? Or something else?”. I mean it can be all those things, but the conflict between seriousness and humour made me feel the story was meant to be over the top with humour. I’m not sure they writer would agree.
I haven’t mentioned the angels and the demonic fellows as I’ve not wanted to spoil any surprises. The premise of it is that angels work for God (well doh!) as devils. They act as prison guards and jailors. The demons are the prisoners. Fallen angels are both good and bad. I personally liked the flame eating Nergal and Lord Sloth. On and Satan isn’t Lucifer, there two separate beings. Makes sense, right?
Son of the Morning isn’t subtle as I’ve mentioned. You’ve the class conflict (egalitarianism VS aristocracy). You’ve God as the usurper and Lucifer as the ‘surped. If either of those bother you as a concept, I’d avoid reading this. However, if you can get past those things, there’s an enjoyable (abet weird) mesh of fantasy and history here. The setting is both refreshing and appealing in a way that it kept drawing me back in. With some slight tweaking of the narrative, less over-the-top humour, Son of the Morning could be an excellent future series.
September 13, 2019
There's a much better review of this book on this site that covers everything from the jerky narrative to the dull characterization/missing motivational threads much more articulately, so maybe look for that one first.
Nice things first:
This purports to be the Hundred Years' War between the English and the French, if angels and devils (which are different from demons in the definitions of this book) got directly involved as supernatural powerhouses. Interestingly, the angels deeply respect the hierarchies of humans, particularly the authority of kings. The angels are also beings of enormous idiocy that tend to be totally useless or pointless, though they get the bulk of descriptive love and florid language.
Even just playing with the historical figures in this narrative should have been lots of fun. It was not.
The blah:
Look, it's a hard concept to "rationalize" into a coherent universe. The pseudo-theology framing was idiotic but we really didn't have to dwell on it or keep beating the dead horse. Instead, it got labored over relentlessly... by protagonists that resembled NPCs in video games. If two NPCs talk to each other, is a conversation really happening? As you may imagine, the extremely one-note "characters" were irritating enough. Now have them loop over the stupidest or weakest aspect of the concept over a hundred thousand words. If you really wanted to belabor the in-universe theology, at least do actual research into the cosmologies and religious details, rather than globbing nonsense together like a kid's tissue-paper collage.
The character of Osbert comes the closest to actually occupying any kind of space, simply because he's rational and pragmatic in a way that gives him leeway to make lots of different choices as a snivelly, opportunistic coward. Everyone else moves in a strictly defined line from point A to point B, motivated by nothing other than authorial mandate. You could think of them also as programs with very few lines of code to execute. And some are just loops.
A good book of this genre or ambitious sweep knows how to frame implications and draw out suspense, allowing the reader to layer on deeper understandings of the world, themes, and machinations, sort of like the making of an oil painting. Failing that, it should just be entertaining and well paced. Yet here, even actions that should have been dynamic or exciting fall flat, thanks to the stilted writing. Plot details that should have been teased out through informative scenes are vomited in piles of infodump in tedious "conversation" (see: above note on NPCs).
The worst of it is that I ended up wasting a lot of time finishing this, simply out of hope that some of the promised fun of the idea would peek through. I can't even shelve this under "cool world, poor plot" - there's no "world"; the "plot" doesn't even hang well on the skeleton of real history. Someone please tackle this idea again with more finesse, powerful characterization, and strategic focus on the pieces that actually matter.
Nice things first:
This purports to be the Hundred Years' War between the English and the French, if angels and devils (which are different from demons in the definitions of this book) got directly involved as supernatural powerhouses. Interestingly, the angels deeply respect the hierarchies of humans, particularly the authority of kings. The angels are also beings of enormous idiocy that tend to be totally useless or pointless, though they get the bulk of descriptive love and florid language.
Even just playing with the historical figures in this narrative should have been lots of fun. It was not.
The blah:
Look, it's a hard concept to "rationalize" into a coherent universe. The pseudo-theology framing was idiotic but we really didn't have to dwell on it or keep beating the dead horse. Instead, it got labored over relentlessly... by protagonists that resembled NPCs in video games. If two NPCs talk to each other, is a conversation really happening? As you may imagine, the extremely one-note "characters" were irritating enough. Now have them loop over the stupidest or weakest aspect of the concept over a hundred thousand words. If you really wanted to belabor the in-universe theology, at least do actual research into the cosmologies and religious details, rather than globbing nonsense together like a kid's tissue-paper collage.
The character of Osbert comes the closest to actually occupying any kind of space, simply because he's rational and pragmatic in a way that gives him leeway to make lots of different choices as a snivelly, opportunistic coward. Everyone else moves in a strictly defined line from point A to point B, motivated by nothing other than authorial mandate. You could think of them also as programs with very few lines of code to execute. And some are just loops.
A good book of this genre or ambitious sweep knows how to frame implications and draw out suspense, allowing the reader to layer on deeper understandings of the world, themes, and machinations, sort of like the making of an oil painting. Failing that, it should just be entertaining and well paced. Yet here, even actions that should have been dynamic or exciting fall flat, thanks to the stilted writing. Plot details that should have been teased out through informative scenes are vomited in piles of infodump in tedious "conversation" (see: above note on NPCs).
The worst of it is that I ended up wasting a lot of time finishing this, simply out of hope that some of the promised fun of the idea would peek through. I can't even shelve this under "cool world, poor plot" - there's no "world"; the "plot" doesn't even hang well on the skeleton of real history. Someone please tackle this idea again with more finesse, powerful characterization, and strategic focus on the pieces that actually matter.
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