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competencefantasy 's review for:
Sarum: The Novel of England
by Edward Rutherfurd
Sarum is impressive in scope but feels like a summary.
This is a historical fiction rendition of the story of a single place, starting from a Kathleen O'Neal Gear-esque prehistoric era up to 1985. The problem is it isn't carried off all that well. To really do the concept justice, each of the chapters needed to be a good short story in its own right. Unfortunately, they weren't.
Many of the chapters feel as though the author was assigned a historical fiction short story for a class and spent most of the time ensuring he got the requisite events in. Sometimes there are entire pages that feel lifted wholesale from a high school history textbook. So much time is spent catching the reader up on the massive amount of historical context, that little is left for nuanced stories or characterization. Though there are many characters, few are memorable. Everyone has one, or at best two, primary motivations at a time,and usually they are the first easy answer for a character in their demographic and setting. The mason wants to build. The reformer wants to reform. The priest would like to please his god. Oh, and almost everyone wants to make a good marriage. That's a freebie. Given the massive scope of the work, I would expect any author to be bogged down. Nevertheless, I'm a little disappointed that characterization is this simplified.
The prose is not precisely bad, but it's far from nuanced. Symptomatic of this is the sheer number of times "it was (character name here)'s fault" came up as a quote. It's clear the author has an impressive grasp of name and date history, but as a writer they feel a lot more immature. There's not a lot of thematic originality beyond that supplied by the setting and the historic events. The writing also contains a personal annoyance of mine, characters having deep conversations about their life views at what feels like the drop of a hat.
Although I think the book is technically unsound, I don't quite dislike it. It's a pleasant, almost soothing, read much of the time. Furthermore, the love the author has for the setting, particularly the cathedral, comes through clearly. The chapters involving Stonehenge and the building of the cathedral stood out as stronger than most of the others. Even when the writing was weak, it was still better than decent by high school history textbook standards, and I've been known to read those for fun. If the author ever puts together a nonfiction study of Salisbury Cathedral, I would probably enjoy reading it because he describes locations better than people.
This is a historical fiction rendition of the story of a single place, starting from a Kathleen O'Neal Gear-esque prehistoric era up to 1985. The problem is it isn't carried off all that well. To really do the concept justice, each of the chapters needed to be a good short story in its own right. Unfortunately, they weren't.
Many of the chapters feel as though the author was assigned a historical fiction short story for a class and spent most of the time ensuring he got the requisite events in. Sometimes there are entire pages that feel lifted wholesale from a high school history textbook. So much time is spent catching the reader up on the massive amount of historical context, that little is left for nuanced stories or characterization. Though there are many characters, few are memorable. Everyone has one, or at best two, primary motivations at a time,and usually they are the first easy answer for a character in their demographic and setting. The mason wants to build. The reformer wants to reform. The priest would like to please his god. Oh, and almost everyone wants to make a good marriage. That's a freebie. Given the massive scope of the work, I would expect any author to be bogged down. Nevertheless, I'm a little disappointed that characterization is this simplified.
The prose is not precisely bad, but it's far from nuanced. Symptomatic of this is the sheer number of times "it was (character name here)'s fault" came up as a quote. It's clear the author has an impressive grasp of name and date history, but as a writer they feel a lot more immature. There's not a lot of thematic originality beyond that supplied by the setting and the historic events. The writing also contains a personal annoyance of mine, characters having deep conversations about their life views at what feels like the drop of a hat.
Although I think the book is technically unsound, I don't quite dislike it. It's a pleasant, almost soothing, read much of the time. Furthermore, the love the author has for the setting, particularly the cathedral, comes through clearly. The chapters involving Stonehenge and the building of the cathedral stood out as stronger than most of the others. Even when the writing was weak, it was still better than decent by high school history textbook standards, and I've been known to read those for fun. If the author ever puts together a nonfiction study of Salisbury Cathedral, I would probably enjoy reading it because he describes locations better than people.