I went into this book expecting to learn about the Hundred Years War and to be entertained. This story managed to do one of these things. John Potenhale is telling a very lengthy tale to the widow of a French knight who he met and admired. The entire book is told in a kind of flowery language that makes me think of the great King Arthur stories or Chaucer’s tales. Such manner of telling a tale works good for a Shakespearean play but was rather tiring for a 10+ hour long novel.

I did like that setting was well done. The politics of the day as well as the geography were covered but not in a big hard to swallow lump. I felt like I was learning things as Potenhale was as he worked hard to become a knight and gain esteem. I think this is a good introduction to the Hundred Years War if someone is looking for a way to get interested in that time period and location.

There are very few female characters and this was a disappointment. There are plenty of histories (nonfiction and fiction) for this war that fail to include the ladies so I was hoping this tale would be more inclusive. There’s Margery, a handmaid to the Lady Joan. That might be it… I think Potenhale thinks about his mom from time to time…. and the Virgin is mentioned several times when a knight feels like praying. Joan and Margery are love interests and nothing else. So that let me down.

The tale has a few slumps but then a rousing battle scene at the end. It wasn’t all glory, which I was glad to see. Potenhale takes in the reek and savagery of battle. Then there’s a bit of an epilogue in which we learn the outcome of the romantic pining that has been going on. All told, it wasn’t great but it wasn’t bad. 3.5/5 stars.

The Narration: James Young did a good job with this narration. He maintained a flowery oration all the way through as the story required. His French accent and pronunciations were great. His female voices could have used a touch more femininity. His pacing was just a touch slow for my taste. 4/5 stars.

I received this audiobook as part of my participation in a blog tour with Audiobookworm Promotions. The tour is being sponsored by Rosanne E. Lortz. The gifting of this audiobook did not affect my opinion of it.

I'm not sure exactly what I was expecting when I started reading Sinful Folk, but I don't think this was it. This novel is unique in many ways, and each character has deeply hidden secrets that only slowly and partially are revealed. 

 

The author has based this story on two seemingly insignificant tidbits of historical fact.

 

1) In 1377, in the village of Duns, 5 boys were burned to death in a house fire. The parents decided to travel to London in order to present the boys bodies to the king and demand justice. 

 

2) The tomb of Edward the Black Prince reads, at his request, "Ich dien Houmout." I serve is clear enough, but Houmout remains a mystery.

 

In this dark Canterbury Tales style novel, Hayes creates his version of the 5 boys who were killed and their parents. The historical record does not reveal if the original party reached London or if they ever discovered what had happened to the boys. A series of discoveries are made in this novelized version that will cause you to think over and over again that you know the truth, only to be proved wrong by new evidence.

 

The story is told from the point of view of Mear, the mother of one of the boys - except that everyone in the village believes that she is his father. We are given little detail on how this former nun managed to convince an entire village that she was a man, besides the fact that she also claimed to be mute, and therefore had no need to disguise her voice.

 

She is understandably obsessed with learning the truth about her son. As we learn more about Mear's past, her son's importance is even greater than anyone knows. Connections between characters are expertly created, though Mear always stays at least somewhat to herself. She trusts no one, believing that the killer is one of the men she travels with.

 

My main issue with this book was not understanding why some of the events would take place, beginning with why parents would load up their children's dead bodies and cart them away to London, rather than pursuing the case without this gory evidence. Other events that I will not give away also left me thinking, "but why?" Setting those feelings aside, the storytelling was expertly done and I was kept wondering until the end what the outcome would be.

 

Many obstacles keep the travelers from reaching their goal, but many surprising truths are eventually revealed. All on the path are sinful folk, with secrets they are hiding and lies they are telling. Even Mear herself.

Note: GoodReads has this book written by two authors: James Lewis and Mat McLeod. However, McLeod’s name doesn’t appear on any of the cover art and he is not listed as an author of the book Audible.com. So, not too sure what is going on there.

It’s the early 1700s, the War of the Spanish Succession has ended, and Sam Bellamy, like so many others, is out of a job. The American colonies is where work and opportunity lay. He falls in love with Maria, a New England debutante who comes from a family of some wealth and repute. Sam must make a name (and a wealthy bank account) for himself before Maria’s parents will even consider him a candidate for her hand. Sam takes on a ship and crew to go treasure hunting off the coast of the Florida. Along the way he meets several other entrepreneurs (aka pirates), earns a few enemies, suffers loss, and gains a wealth of knowledge.

Sam is a good guy, like the boy next door. He can be depended on to do the honorable thing. So while his character was pretty predictable, he was still fun and easy to connect with. He runs around saving women, rescuing his men, and standing up to bullies and other disreputables. In fact, his inclinations towards the good true often leave him in a fight.

This is the time of privateers. It seems every major European country has their privateers. The rules these privateers live by seems largely up to the captain. Needless to say if you privateer on an opposing countries ships and get caught, you can be hung as a pirate. The line between pirate and privateer is often thin. I bet you can guess how our hero Black Sam Bellamy ends up in so much trouble!

There’s plenty of historical characters, like Black Beard the pirate, walking in and giving cameos in this book. That was quite fun and I am sure there are more than I recognized. Sometimes they were giving Sam a hand, sometimes obstructing him, and definitely showing him the seedier side to pirating.

There are very few women in this story and often they are focused on the men and/or need rescuing. Maria was the main female and even so she had a small role. If she wasn’t thinking about men she was talking to or about them. Hence, the ladies were entirely predictable and rather boring.

I did enjoy the book. The plot was a bit predictable because the main characters were predictable. Even so, it was a fun romp through the American colonies and on the high seas. The good guys win, the sticklers for protocol get snubbed and perhaps learn something, and the bad guys either die or go on to wreak havoc for a sequel. If you are looking for a pirate adventure that doesn’t require close attention, then this is perfect brain candy.

The Narration: As you can see above, there was quite the cast for this book! Alex Hyde-White was our main narrator and he did a really good job as Sam Bellamy’s voice. I had a fun time picking out familiar narrators as they popped in and out. My only criticism is that sometimes the background white noise changed as we switched narrators, making it clear that not everyone was in the same studio during recording, and also some studios had a better quality of recording than others.  

One of the best books by one of the best novelists of the 20th century. The story of the heinously bitter and unreliable Bradley Pearson is rich with complexity of character and situation. Between the bitterness and the self-justification, answers to the questions about what really happened" become almost unknowable- the only "truth" in the book is emotional truth

The title of this book is somewhat misleading. "A Novel of the Black Prince" could just as accurately read "A Novel of Geoffroi de Charny" or "Story of a Chivalrous Knight." The story is not really about Edward of Woodstock and does not cover the entirety of his life, though he is a character. That being said, I did enjoy this novel and found John Potenhale to be a believable man of his times (mid 1300's). In fact, the historical accuracy of events, attitudes, and impact of Christian beliefs on people's behavior to be the most impressive aspects of this novel. I may not have learned all that I hoped about the Black Prince, but I did learn a fair amount about Charny which helped to make up for it. The author's excellent descriptions of the battles at Crecy and Poitiers also helped make this a 4-star book for me. The most significant thing keeping me from rating it even higher is the style of writing which at times takes away from the flow of the story. The writer occasionally uses words that seem to be chosen for their ability to demonstrate the author's impressive vocabulary rather than because they are best suited to the sentence. This I could overlook though, as I don't mind being forced to learn a new word now and then. The more awkward aspect of the writing was the narrative style. As I would be reading along, the story flows in a first person style until a phrase such as "your husband" or "as you must know" would jolt me out of the story and remind me that the entire book is supposedly a monologue being given by Potenhale to Charny's wife. Then the final chapter drops this style and goes to third person. In my opinion, a standard first person narrative would have better served the novel and avoided the strange reminders of how the story was being told. Despite these minor negatives, this is a compelling story that is definitely a worthwhile read for any lover of British history.