Kate Heartfield

A historical fantasy set in fourteenth-century Bruges about a widow who leads a raid on a Hellmouth to save her daughter.

Armed in Her Fashion

“Heartfield’s impressive novel tells the story of folklore figure Mad Meg (or Dull Gret), who legendarily led a group of women to pillage hell” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). In 1328, Bruges is under siege by the Chatelaine of Hell and her army of chimeras—humans mixed with animals or armor, forged in the deep fires of the Hellbeast. At night, revenants crawl over the walls and bring plague and grief to this city of widows. Margriet de Vos learns she’s a widow herself when her good-for-nothing husband comes home dead from the war. He didn’t come back for her—in fact he moves right past her, pulls a secret chest of coins and weapons from under his floorboards, and goes back through the mouth of the beast called Hell. Margriet killed her first soldier when she was eleven, and she’s buried six of her seven children. She’ll do anything for Beatrix, her last surviving child, even if it means raiding Hell itself to get her inheritance back. Beatrix is haunted by a dead husband of her own, and blessed—or cursed—with an enchanted distaff that allows her to control the revenants and see the future. Together with a transgender man-at-arms who has unfinished business with the Chatelaine, a traumatized widow with a giant water-powered forge-hammer at her disposal, and a wealthy alderman’s wife who escapes Bruges with her children, Margriet and Beatrix forge a raiding party like Hell has never seen. “A strange, compelling, genre-bending debut . . . Part horror, part fantasy, part history, and part epic, it combines all of its elements into a commentary on gender, power, and patriarchy.” —Tor.com

Sheila

3.5 stars. 14th century Belgium is not a time I think about often, and certainly not on the relatively granular scale presented in this book, but it was fun! A cast of predominantly women going up against revenants and chimeras and Hell on earth. 

Doubly fun to read a book by a local Ottawa author! Fantastical historical fiction is always a blast, even slower-paced versions like this one.

libby g

I was very excited to read this book. I was looking forward to a crazy ass wild ride filled with Hell demons and historical references and kickass fight scenes, as alluded to in the summary on Goodreads. But, alas, I was left sorely disappointed. I don’t understand how it’s possible to make a journey to Hell, across zombie and animal-creature-armour-weapon-human-monsters infested Europe boring!? How is that possible? Honestly, props to the author for being able to make this unexciting. It’s a skill in and of itself.

That’s not to say this novel was all bad, in fact I really loved some aspects of it. Heartfield transports you completely into another world, not only through setting although that is a huge part of it. She uses the time and place of her novel to build an amazing foundation for where her story takes place but solidifies this further through the use of characterization, language, and perspective. Whether it’s the religious tonality, significance of gender roles, or vocabulary everything seems perfectly suited to the world that Heartfield is building. The attention to detail in terms of historical accuracy is astounding**. Other than, of course, the zombies and chimeras, and a woman who locked the King of Hell into the Hell beast with keys fashioned into a mace. 

But that brings me to another point of excellence in this novel: the fantasy. Heartfield has created an extremely complex world where history and fantasy blend together and riff off each other in a very interesting way. It’s incredible that the author was able to create a world wherein history and fantasy are so thick but they make sense together. It fits into the world and it fits into the story without seeming forced. 

These pros do, however, come hand in hand with some cons. And that is the simple fact of my extreme confusion at the beginning of the book. There are so many new words and ideas--historical or fantastical--shoved into the first section of the novel that it was hard to keep track of. As previously mentioned, I’m no expert on 14th century Belgium and a lot of the terminology was unfamiliar to me. Couple that with crazy made up creatures and a whole new system of reality that I have to learn in fewer than fifty pages and let’s just say it was hard to wrap my head around. God bless my main homie, Google, for getting me through them, your contribution to the cause if duly noted. 

Eventually I began to understand what was what and who was who and that’s when the sheer immensity of world building dawned on me. This book is thicc with history and fantasy.

I found that the writing style wasn’t anything extraordinary but it wasn’t bad either. I think the fact that nothing in particular jumped out at me was actually a good thing a suited the story best. With so much already going on in terms of setting, language, and characters I think that a flowery writing style would have made it even more confusing. The bluntness makes it easier to determine what exactly is going on.

Also, there were quite a few nuggets of wisdom thrown about here and there. I’m am not the kind of person who writes down quotes from novels or anything like that but I actually took note of two--this is weird for me you guys. 

“I’ve known children who’ve lived several lives, and old men who’ve yet to live a single life that counted.”

“For some people courage came like wrinkles; for some courage came like scars, all of a sudden.”

They’re nice, eh? I think so at least.

The thing that bothered me most about this novel was the fact that it was very, very difficult for me to get through on account of e x t r e m e l y s l o w p a c i n g. Extremely. Now, although the fact that it has slow pacing is non-arguable, how much it bothered me was strictly a personal issue. I’m sure it wouldn’t bother a lot of other people as much as it did me--the book has received largely positive reviews on Goodreads so far. I guess this book just wasn’t meant for me.

I thought the characters weren’t great either. Margariet is stubborn as fuck, Beatrix is kind of a pussy, Claude was the only one I liked, and I was just confused by the motivations of the Bitch of Hell. Like, why does the ruler of Hell care about mundane politics? I get she wants power but she’s literally the CEO of Hell, she doesn’t need human money or human power, like, girl, what are you doing? Don’t let that son of a bitch French King get all up in your shit. You’re doing fine for yourself.

I did, however, like the fact that the Bitch of Hell wasn’t all powerful. She is confined by the ability and size of her army just as any other king or queen would be. Although she can create fantastic beasts and what are pretty much talking zombies, she can’t magically win every battle or summon every powerful figure to do her bidding. It’s always good when the villain has drawbacks, and drawbacks she had indeed.

Some additional notes I took on the Bitch of Hell:
- Lol at how they speak French in Hell
- Lol at how the King of France wants to get lawyers involved in the business of Hell

There’s not all that much suspense in this novel. We know both sides of the story: Margriet’s, Beatrix’s, Claude’s, and the Bitch of Hell’s, so there’s not that much for us to uncover. I think this novel would have been more compelling if there was more for the reader to discover throughout the novel. The way that it is constructed now is more of a series of events rather than a twisting, meandering, developing plot. There are like two questions that drag the story along and to be honest they aren’t particularly interesting ones.

A lot of peeing--or rather, “pissing”--occurs in this novel. The book actually opens with the main character taking a piss in a field which I thought was kind of fun and different; books normally ignore most bodily functions. When it happened the second time I thought that was all well and good, just taking a piss, I need to piss sometimes too, that’s relatable. And then it happened a third time and I was kind of over it. I don’t need to know every time someone pisses. We even get to know when Beatrix gets her period. Yeah, okay, that’s normal and natural but I don’t think it’s necessary to include in a novel. There’s a reason you don’t normally see shit like this in books. I’ll be okay without the details I think. Feel free to piss and bleed in peace.

I have literally zero emotional connection to any of these characters so I don’t really care when bad things happen to them. It’s like, yeah, okay, another thing happened… so what? It’s difficult to get through a book when I don’t care about anything at all, even if the setting is cool and the premise is cool and the characters, theoretically, could be cool. Not much is cool in reality though.

The conclusion of this novel was not all that ground breaking or exciting or worth trudging through 250 pages for. After the story had been dragged through dirt from Bruges to Hell there wasn’t even a dramatic closure to make up for all the heel dragging, pissing in bushes, and useless dialogue as the main characters walked across Europe. However, although it wasn’t the ending that I had hoped for (i.e. an entertaining one), at least things of consequence actually occurred and the pacing sped up a reasonable amount.

Although this book was not the worst thing I’ve ever read in my life it wasn’t good either. It didn’t make me want to shoot myself but after a while the thought of turning into a revenant and not being able to perform any particularly demanding intellectual functions did become fairly appealing.


* At one point in the novel the Chatelaine of Hell is referred to--by our main character Margriet--as the “Bitch of Hell” so that’s what I’ll be calling her throughout the review.

** I think. I’m a history major but nowhere close to being an expert on 14th century Bruges. But from what I can tell an immense amount of research and background knowledge went into creating this book.

Armed in Her Fashion

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