This took me a while to get into, and it took me a while to work out why. I don't read a huge amount of historical fiction, but I do have some favourites: Dorothy Dunnett and Patrick O'Brian. But these are tales of adventure and romance set against vivid historical back-drops, incorporating historical figures and events, but primarily concerned with their own plots and characters. This is historical fiction that reads like non-fiction, more like a work of journalism that recreates scenes and events than a novel. It is a novel, of course, a superb one, and it is fictional, but its primary concern is an historical figure and the historical events he was part of. History may contain plots, but it isn't A plot. History is big, sprawling, rambling, unsentimental and only has shape in retrospect. In A Dark Wood Wandering is a rigorous examination of a person and his milieu, and an extraordinary feat of sympathetic imagination.

1494, Charles d'Orleans is christened in Paris. His father, after whom he is named, is brother to the king, and the king is suffering from spells of madness. The elder Charles is being drawn into a divisive conflict with the powerful and influential Duke of Burgundy, who is pursuing his own interests in the north of France, while Orleans tries to guide the king closer to the interest of France. Courtly and political intrigue and maneuver and counter-maneuvre consume the rivals. Lies and rumours drive Orleans' wife from Paris and the conflict slowly turns deadly.

Young Charles grows up blissfully until a terrible act thrusts him into adulthood too soon and lays a heavy burden of vengeance and blood feud on his youthful shoulders. Utterly unsuited to his leadership role, Charles is intelligent and dutiful, but lacks the edge of political and physical ruthlessness he needs to be truly effective. He cannot break free of the powerful personalities that control him and out-maneuver him. His sensitive poet's soul, which he denies, suffers horribly through tragedy and loss and dire efforts to retain his honour and fulfill his duty.

The cost of duty, the merciless demands placed on the powerful, the disintegration of a once-great country and the appalling suffering that ensues. This is far from the playful textual and semiotic literary games of Name Of the Rose. This is a serious, unflinching novel, that gradually accumulates an emotional and intellectual weight until by the final few hundred pages it is nearly impossible to stop reading.