Joan of Arc or The Terminator

 

⭑⭑⭑  I so wanted to love this novel as Joan of Arc is a fascinating character of history I much admire. If I was rating Joan solely on style and beauty of writing, I would give five stars, easy. It is genuinely poetic and wonderfully crafted wordplay. But, sadly, I need to rate the story, too, which didn't survive contact, for me.

I know a fair bit of Joan and she is not the character represented in these pages. This is fiction, I grant you, but by the end I was ready to hasten Joan on her way to English hands so the constant lecturing and pontificating would end. One would not expect an illiterate peasant girl from the 1400s to ramble so to all and sundry, mostly scolding the reigning monarch of France, no less. Well crafted as it was, it  wore thin.

Her early years and rough childhood were well covered and I keenly felt the pain of her difficult start in life. Full marks there. But, as I understand it, Joan was solidly built on a tiny frame of 5'2", not a huge oxen of endless strength requiring men to stand on tiptoe to whisper in her ear. She also didn't go wading into battle with bloodlust dispatching all in her path but was more of a sideline cheerleader, or mascot, giving the fighting men a morale boost. And, the most troubling for me of all, no visions from God? This is the core of Joan's existence, her guiding light, and this text does not go there. As I said before, this is fiction and creative license is permissible, but to change a historically important character so irrevocably just smacks of wokery. Revisionist history, so common these days, changing the events and people of the past to suit modern views and sensibilities.  

This is a really good novel beautifully written and if it was based on a fictional character I would have given it five stars. But I feel Joan deserves more than this. Sometimes the truth, no matter how inconvenient, simply must be told. The Joan of this novel would agree with me.