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Heretic

Heretic is the least historically accurate of the Grail Quest series and is also, in my opinion anyway, by far the best of them. It solves my biggest complaints with the previous books - the reams of exposition and the lack of character agency - and ends up being a very enjoyable read.

I'm someone who normally enjoys historical verisimilitude, but I think Cornwell painted himself into a bit of a corner with his choice of protagonist. An English archer fighting in the Hundred Years War might sound interesting on paper but, in practice, resulted in two books of not much more than battle scenes; as a commoner, Thomas has very little control over strategic decisions, and effectively goes and fights wherever his masters tell him. This leads to the sort of 'things happened' plot that doesn't create much tension (despite the horrific things the protagonist goes through) and a somewhat dull book. My regular complaint with sword and sorcery fiction very much applied to the first two books: without quiet, there can be no loud, and constant action scenes quickly stop being exciting.

Heretic, however, breaks with this formula. Very early on Thomas is given a mission and granted control of a small number of men. Suddenly, his decisions have weight, and the book stops feeling static. Much improved prose, more interesting and fleshed out side characters, and the mystery of a quest for the holy grail all certainly helped. There were still fight scenes aplenty, but this time they actually felt like they had consequences, instead of being standalone set-pieces.

Heretic is still not a perfect book. The exposition was reined in, but there was still more than I would have liked, and the pace accelerated a little too fast towards the conclusion. Thomas also makes some rather questionable decisions, but it does actually feel like he was making them this time.

Overall, I quite enjoyed Heretic. There were plenty of Cornwell's poignant scenes and the plot flowed nicely from chapter to chapter. It paints an, at times, vivid picture of what life may have been like for the ordinary people caught up in the war, but feels less shocking and more reflective than the previous books. The whole series demonstrates wonderfully that the choice of protagonist can make a huge difference to a book, especially for historical fiction where the plot direction is naturally more limited.