The Firedrake A Novel

Cecelia Holland — 2014

An Irish mercenary knight joins William of Normandy for the invasion of England, and faces a stark choice at Hastings, in this “powerful” novel (The New York Times). In The Firedrake, an Irish mercenary knight in the eleventh century, in a constant personal battle with the rest of the world, joins William of Normandy for the invasion of England. There at Hastings he has to choose between power and wealth, and his personal demons of pride and honor. The New York Times called Cecelia Holland “a literary phenomenon” in its review of this book, recognizing a stellar creative achievement by a young writer in her first published work.

Reviews

Janice Hopper@archergal

Nov 2, 2022

This was an interesting book that took me a while to get into. In the beginning, you're just plopped down with the main character with no background of what time period it is, or who he is, or anything really. This character, Laeghaire, is a mercenary, and it quickly becomes apparent that he's a mercenary some time in the Middle Ages. (BTW, we're told in the prologue that his name -Laeghaire- is the Gaelic spelling of Lear, as in King Lear, though I think that's where the resemblance ends.) Turns out he's a mercenary in the 11th century. And he's going to end up at the Battle of Hastings with William the Conqueror. Laeghaire is a rough and violent man, but he's also a soldier in a time where battles were rough and violent and face to face, for the most part. He has two horses that he loves, but they're never named, just "the black" and "the brown." He ends up with a woman because he saw her being beaten by her father (I think) and bought her from him for a doxy. He stands up to rulers, including William, and is frequently chastized by them for being mouthy or insubordinate. He has a reputation as a very great fighter. He likes fighting, and he likes roaming. One of his names is Laeghaire of the Long Road, because of his unsettled ways. He was born in Ireland, but hasn't been there in years. It's really a character study, but told almost totally from outside Laeghaire's head. We almost never see his thoughts. We see his actions, and can, in some cases, infer what he's feeling from them. I picked up a Cecelia Holland book because of hearing her on The Coode Street Podcast a couple of times. She primarily writes historical fiction (like this). While I didn't find the prose gripping, I kept coming back to see what Laeghaire was going to do, and what was going to happen with him. You can see some of the things that happen coming from a long ways away. Other things are more surprising. I think The Firedrake was her first novel, published in 1966. I think it would be interesting to read a later book of hers to see how her writing had changed over the years. As to the title: Vocabulary.com defines a firedrake as "a creature of Teutonic mythology; usually represented as breathing fire and having a reptilian body and sometimes wings". Not a literal description, but pretty good as a figurative one.