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I don't have a TBR pile of books to read this year. Last year I had an informal one consisting of books that various blogs and YouTube presenters had praised. I've worked my way through that slim stack, so that now, when I finish one book, I have to scramble to find another one to read. Luckily, I have 16 Cadfael novels to fall back on. And fall back on them we did this week.
My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.
Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.
The Devil's Novice by Ellis Peters A
This is the 8th novel in the series.
Note to myself: write your reviews shortly after you read the books. Don't put it off. Which is what I've done for this review.
Right. It's slowly coming back to me. (Without even having to get up, walk over to the book shelf behind me, pull out and bring the book to my desk, and renew my acquaintance with it.) I have in now. This story starts with a young man who is handed off by his father to the Abbey to become a monk - the devil's novice of the title. This young man is very eager to become a monk as quickly as possible. Too eager, thinks Cadfael. Why? The novice is, however troubled by the sight of blood, and by nightmares which disturbs the other novices and students. He also manages to get himself into trouble as well, so that it is felt by some in the abbey that he is somehow possessed by the devil at times.
The second plotline consists of a church courier sent by King Stephen with a message to some nobles in the north of England, who has gone missing. This plot is tied into the novice and his family, when the courier's horse is found, suggesting that courier has been murdered only a day after staying at the novice's family manor. Is the novice somehow involved in the murder of this courier? And if so, how?
Like all of Peters' Cadfael stories, the story is more of character study, and historic fiction, than a murder mystery, but murder mysteries they are and it is. And murders have to be solved, as they are, with the keen eye and long experience in the outside world that Cadfael brings to the cloistered life of the abbey. Once again, I enjoyed this book without reservations.
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