Review ~ The Plague Charmer by Karen Maitland

Headline Review
20 October 2016

A bit of Blurb...

Riddle me this : I have a price, but it cannot be paid in gold or silver.

1361. Porlock Weir, Exmoor. Thirteen years after the Great Pestilence, plague strikes England for the second time. Sara, a packhorse man's wife, remembers the horror all too well and fears for safety of her children. 

Only a dark-haired stranger offers help, but at a price that no one will pay.

Fear gives way to hysteria in the village and, when the sickness spreads to her family, Sara finds herself locked away by neighbours she has trusted for years. And, as her husband - and then others - begin to die, the cost no longer seems so unthinkable.

The price that I ask, from one willing to pay... A human life...

My thoughts about the book..

Set in 1361, and with a clever blend of mysticism, superstition and folklore, The Plague Charmer looks at the catastrophic effects of a great pestilence which is sweeping England and as it moves inexorably towards Porlock Weir an impoverished fishing village on the edge of Exmoor, so does the threat of impending doom. The villagers eke out a lowly existence, reliant on land and sea for their meagre survival, and so when an enigmatic stranger emerges from the sea and offers them a deadly bargain which will keep them safe from the plague, well, therein lies their dilemma, to acquiesce, or not, is a decision they must make for themselves. However, the menacing gloom which emanates from this stranger is enough to deepen their sense of growing unease.

I’m deliberately being reticent about the story content because if you are familiar with this author’s writing, you will know that her work is incredibly difficult to review without giving too much away, but what I will say is that The Plague Charmer bears all the usual hallmarks of this talented writer. She infuses her novels with such glorious historical detail, that it becomes difficult, on looking up from the book, to adjust to life in the 21st century. Life in the fourteenth century didn’t happen in a rush, and this is reflected in the way The Plague Charmer is allowed to evolve ever so slowly, but as always time and place is captured to perfection. There is so much historical detail that it truly reads like a medieval travelogue, not that you would want to return to Porlock Weir in 1361, but by the time you have finished The Plague Charmer, believe me, you will feel like you have been there and witnessed at first hand the blend of horror, superstitious terror and medieval chaos which this author brings so vividly to life.

The riddles and proverbs which head each chapter are fascinating and cleverly combine folklore and superstition into the narrative. The author’s complex historical detail, which is given at the end of the novel, shows just how much attention to detail goes into the story content. Even if I didn't know much about Karen Maitland as an author I would buy this book just for the cover, which tantalisingly, offers something deliciously dark.

Best read with.. fish caught in the weir pool and a cup of pungent ale from Sybil's brew house..

About the Author

Karen Maitland is the author of The White Room, Company of Liars,The Owl Killers,The Gallows Curse, The Falcons of Fire and ice, The Vanishing With and The Raven's Head.

You can find her on her website by clicking here


The Plague Charmer is published  on the 20th October 2016 and is available form Amazon and all good book stores.

My thanks to Caitlin at Headline for my copy of The Plague Charmer.

~***~

Review ~ The Raven's Head by Karen Maitland

Headline
12th March 2015

In The Raven’s Head, allow yourself to travel back to a deadly place, where conjurers and alchemical magicians bring forth their dark and twisted magic in the hope of gaining power and immortality.

Three disparate characters, seemingly unrelated get drawn into an alchemical conundrum which at first bears no relation to the life they are all leading. Vincent is a disgruntled librarian who thinks that life is better on the other side of the proverbial medieval fence. His clumsy attempt at blackmailing his Lord will leave him in possession of a carved silver raven’s head, a deadly artefact, which was the alchemical symbol of death. Wilky, a young boy taken from his peasant family, is given into the terrifying care of the religious order of the White Canons. Whilst Gisa, a young maiden working for her aunt and uncle, is learning an apothecaries skill with herbs and potions, when she gets drawn into the deadly world of Lord Sylvain, a puppet master with an eye on the main chance, and whose lust for the raven's head will soon enfold all four characters in a deadly game of chance.

The story gets off to a slow start, there is much to take in and the characters need to make their own mark before they start to come together. This is done with the author’s fine attention to detail, and as always no historical stone is left unturned and no detail is left unrecorded The characters are realistic to the point where you sense them in the room beside you, and watch in fascinated awe, sometimes bordering on terror, as they all get drawn further and further into a deadly game of scheming sacrifice and unadulterated evil.

I can think of no other author currently writing medieval fiction who can, with one sweep of her pen, conjure an ancient world so believable that time literally stands still as you read, and your very modern world starts to change imperceptibly, until you feel the creep of ancient magic burrow into your bones, and the ache of superstition starts to lie heavy on your mortal soul.

With twenty first century sensibilities, it's hard to imagine such a dangerous world of myth and legend, and yet, in The Raven’s Head, Karen Maitland succeeds in drawing the reader into the story and combines the very best of medieval storytelling with an alchemical tale which abounds with high treachery, deceit and danger.

My thanks to Headline Review for my copy of this book to read in advance of its publication.

Read a guest post by Karen Maitland here.

~***~

Guest Post ~ Karen Maitland

I am delighted to welcome back to the blog

Karen Maitland

Photograph by kind permission

The Raven's Head

Headline Review
12th March 2014

Talking Heads by Karen Maitland 

I’ve long been fascinated by the ancient art of alchemy which lies at the heart of my latest medieval thriller THE RAVEN’S HEAD. The raven’s head was the alchemist’s symbol of death and putrefaction. 

Alchemy was first practised in Egypt by the ancient Greeks in the 4th century BC. Later famous alchemists surprisingly include Sir Walter Raleigh, the artist Van Dyke, Queen Christina of Sweden, King Charles II of England and Sir Isaac Newton. 

But in the Middle Ages, alchemy was a dangerous practice. Many of the chemical experiments they attempted went horribly wrong, leading to explosions or fires. Given that many building in towns were made of wood, neighbours got a bit twitchy if they though there was an alchemist living next door, so often attacked them, beating them up and smashing their laboratories. And if word got round that an alchemist really had succeeded in producing gold, they might well be murdered by thieves, or tortured into revealing their secrets. So alchemists carried out their work in secret, recording their experiments in elaborate codes. 

Explosion in Alchemist lab

But the real-life alchemist who inspired the character of Arthmael in my novel was the Franciscan friar, Roger Bacon (1214-1294). He introduced gunpowder to the west. He also predicted the invention of the microscope, planes and steamships. But it was his alchemy experiments and books that really got him into trouble with his superiors in the Church and for the last ten years of his life he was imprisoned on charges of heresy and sorcery. That didn’t stop him though, he kept writing about his great obsession – the mysterious art of alchemy that had the power to turn lead into gold or produce the elixir of eternal life. 

One of the strangest legends about him was that he created a head of brass to foretell the future. He left his apprentice, Miles, to watch over the head, warning him that he must answer at once if the head spoke. When Miles was alone, the head suddenly spoke saying, ‘Time is.’ 

But Miles didn’t understand what that meant, so he ignored it. 

After a while the head said, ‘Time was.’ But Miles just gaped at it. 

Finally the head said, ‘Time is passed’ and burst into flames, for the time to question it had passed forever. 

Brasenose College in Oxford has a 12th century door-knocker in the form of a head which for centuries the college claimed to be the brazen head Roger Bacon made. I wonder what that head will predict if it ever decides to speak again. 

Brazen Head Knocker at
Brasenose College, Oxford

©Karen Maitland

Website

Amazon UK

My thanks to Karen Maitland for giving us such a fascinating glimpse into the ancient art of Alchemy

 and

 Caitlin Raynor at Headline Review for her help with this guest post.

The Raven's Head

is 

published 12th March and is available online and from  all good bookshops.

~***~

Sunday War Poet ~ Author's Choice ~ Karen Maitland

I am delighted to welcome to my blog

Author 

Karen Maitland

Sharing her Sunday WW1 Poem

When I was a child I went to stay with an elderly great aunt who’d never married, but who always wore a slender engagement ring. I loved it, but was curious about why she never removed that particular ring, even to do the washing-up. When I finally plucked up the courage to ask her and she said simply - ‘I wear it for someone who never came back.’

Then she went to her bedroom and brought down a faded book of Rupert Brooke’s poems. She opened it at this poem ‘Fragment’ and told me to read it. ‘When you’re old enough to truly understand that poem,’ she said, ‘you’ll understand why I always wear this ring.’

We never spoke of it again, but when she died she left me the book of poems and the ring. I wear the ring constantly myself now. It’s thin with age, but I wouldn't part with it. I never did discover the name of the person she’d lost. Rumour in family was that she was engaged to a First World War pilot who was killed in action. I don’t know if that is true, but I wear the ring for my aunt and for all the unnamed ones who never returned. 

And this poem still chills me. We are all ghosts in waiting.

Fragment ~ Rupert Brooke

I strayed about the deck, an hour, to-night

Under a cloudy moonless sky; and peeped

In at the windows, watched my friends at table,

Or playing cards, or standing in the doorway,

Or coming out into the darkness. Still

No one could see me.

                                          I would have thought of them

—Heedless, within a week of battle—in pity,

Pride in their strength and in the weight and firmness

And link’d beauty of bodies, and pity that

This gay machine of splendour ’ld soon be broken,

Thought little of, pashed, scattered. …

                                                                        Only, always,

I could but see them—against the lamplight—pass

Like coloured shadows, thinner than filmy glass,

Slight bubbles, fainter than the wave’s faint light,

That broke to phosphorus out in the night,

Perishing things and strange ghosts—soon to die

To other ghosts—this one, or that, or I.

***

Karen Maitland is the best selling author 

of

    

and

 Due in August 2015

Huge thanks to Karen for sharing her personal memories of this poem and for explaining why
Fragment by Rupert Brooke is so important to her.

*~*~*

Review ~ The Vanishing Witch by Karen Maitland

Headline Review

14th August 2014

If a witch tries to bewitch you, spit at her so that the spittle lands between her eyes. That will break the spell.

In The Vanishing Witch, the authentic feel of medieval England comes alive in a tale which thrives on intrigue and superstition. Effortlessly weaving supernatural elements with historical fact, the interpretation of the peasant’s revolt from its ungainly beginning in 1380, runs alongside the story of Robert of Bassingham, a wealthy Lincolnshire wool merchant, whose unwise relationship with an inscrutable widow, will have far reaching consequences. And, as the rich get richer, the disenchanted poor decide that the time to fight back is coming sooner rather than later.

Maitland’s command of the story really shines throughout the narrative. Beautifully written with an uncanny eye for detail, the peasant’s heroic struggles are convincingly portrayed and the complex nature of the story allows the multifaceted characters to evolve at their own pace. The stories they tell, their hidden secrets and mammoth lies, all coalesce to reveal an intricate novel in which treachery and heartless injustice walk hand in hand with the complexity of medieval life. There is never any part of the narrative that doesn't transport you back to a time of ancient superstition, when danger is glimpsed on every street corner, and where dark and dangerous forces linger in the grey and gloomy alleyways of our medieval towns and cities.

Walking the medieval streets of Lincoln in the company of Karen Maitland is like stepping from a superior time travel machine, and even though you know that the world outside your door belongs to the 21^st century, your mind is easily convinced that medieval England actually co-exists in the here and now. And lingering like a shadow in the darkness, you hear the muffled voice of a stranger calling for help, the mist swirls over the river and in your imagination the year 1380 has just begun.

Highly recommended.

 My thanks to newbooks and Headline  for my copy of this book

*~*~*

The author in my spotlight is ...Karen Maitland

It is with great pleasure that I welcome

Karen Maitland

Author

 of 

Headline Review
14th August 2014

Karen ~ A warm welcome to Jaffareadstoo and thank you for taking the time to chat about your latest book.

The Vanishing Witch.

What inspired you to write The Vanishing Witch and how many rough drafts did it take before you were happy with the story?

There were three elements that came together to inspire the novel. The first was years ago I came across the records of a wealthy medieval woman accused of murdering four husbands by witchcraft. She never came to trial, and I always wondered was she wicked, or entirely innocent and falsely accused?

The second element was watching the news reports of the London riots of 2011 which shared many elements of the Peasants Revolt of 1381, when thousands of ordinary people started looting, killing and burning buildings in towns all over the country. People claimed the London riots of 2011 were fuelled by use of social media, but there were no mobiles or even telephones in 1380’s, yet word somehow spread nearly as fast.

The third element came from going on ghost walks in Lincoln. Lincoln is a city of ghosts, almost as if a parallel world has burrowed in and hidden among the living. But what do the ghosts think about the living?

I redrafted The Vanishing Witch more than any other novel, probably about 20 times in total, because as the novel evolved the character I thought was going to be the at the heart of the story convinced me that they weren't, and it was another character’s story. So only about a quarter of the original novel remains in the published version. I have a very patient editor!

Your writing is very atmospheric – how do you ‘set the scene’ in your novels and how much research did you do in order to bring The Vanishing Witch  to life?

I was able to walk the streets of Lincoln in the daylight and after dark which still contains many medieval buildings and imagine where my characters walked and tried to picture what they would have seen using old maps and records. Back in 1381, the Brayford harbour, though inland, would been filled with sounds of men shouting, sawing and hammering as boats were repaired and paggers unloaded fish, wine and spices from the boats and loaded great bales of wool and cloth. 

The Prologue of the novel takes place in the sinister marshes that bordered the river, shrouded in mist. These marshes have long been drained, but I spent time writing in a cottage on the marshes in Norfolk, so I could describe the eerie sounds of the marsh at night and how dense fog distorts voices.

I think it is important to actually visit the places where the novels are set. When you’re there you notice smells or sounds you’d never get from seeing it on google-earth, but also you can act out what your characters are doing there. Could they hear the river from that point? Where would they have hidden on that staircase? The Greestone Stairs is said to be the most haunted street in England and coming down that lane at night in the steady light of modern street-lamps can be unnerving, but if you stop and try to imagine what it would be like coming down those uneven steps by the light of flickering torch-flames with a murderer behind you …

In your research for The Vanishing Witch did you discover anything which surprised you?

I was amazed that the rioters were able seize and slaughter such important people like the Archbishop of Canterbury so easily and to break in places that you imagine should have been well-defended like the Tower of London, the Savoy Palace owned by John of Gaunt and the great prisons of London. Obviously the guards had fled or were helping the rebels, but it was fascinating how quickly such fortified strongholds could fall. Also the sheer bravado of King Richard who aged only 14 years was able to convince an angry mob of thousands of adult rebels to follow him into a trap and the sheer scale and horror of the bloody and brutal revenge the boy-king ordered afterwards. Today, we call 14 year olds ‘children’.

Another aspect of the research I found fascinating was the witchcraft. There is an assumption that the Church always condemned divination, and summoning of spirits and demons, but I was interested to discover how many clergy wrote instruction manuals on how to summon spirits and demons or on varies forms of divination and regularly practised these on behalf the Church. Equally how often laity or so-called ‘witches’ when they were casting evil spells would either use things stolen from the church such as holy water or would invoke the names of saints and the Holy Trinity in the spell, using the very things you would have expected to counter the evil they were planning.

Your book covers are very distinctive - do you work in collaboration with the cover designer, and if so how much input do you have in choosing the final design?

I love the book covers, but I can’t take any credit for them. I don’t have any input, which is just as well, as I don’t have any artist talent at all.  The editor and artist collaborate over the covers, so they are always a surprise to me. I was delighted when one reader pointed out that the runes on the tongue of the wolf on the cover of Company of Liars spells out the name of murderer.

I am also in awe of how much thought goes into the cover detail when the publishing team ask for a subtle change in the shade of one of the colours or the lettering made bigger or smaller by a tiny fraction. I can never spot the difference until I put the two covers side by side and then realise it makes all the difference in the world. But you do have to have real design talent to spot what adjustments to make, which I could never do.

When do you find the time to write, and do you have a favourite place to do your writing?

My first novel was written in the evenings and weekends around a full-time job, but now I write full time. Deadlines mean I try to start at 9am and finish at 6pm with half an hour for lunch. That time is solid writing. In the evenings I research those questions that have cropped up while I’ve been writing, because I can’t break off in the middle of a scene to research them, it destroys the atmosphere. So in the evenings I look up things like – Was it the fashionable in that year for a man to wear a belt round the hips or round his waist? If you poisoned someone with dwale (deadly nightshade) how long before they start to feel the effects.  Weekends often involve a trip to a museum to look at medieval objects or to a location or a building of the type in which I plan to set a scene.

I have converted a small derelict workshop in the tiny garden to write in, which means I can go away from the house even if it’s only a few yards. I sit facing a blank white wall, so that I can almost project the scene I’m watching in my head onto the wall. My writing hole has all kinds of replica medieval things in it which I can handle as I write, no phone so I can’t be interrupted,  and if I want an internet connection I have to sit with the door wide open even in mid-winter, but at least that stops me being tempted to look at dancing ferrets on you-tube.

And finally for fun –

If you had your own time travel machine, at which event in history would you like to be a fly on the wall, and why?

There are lots of mysteries I’d love to go back and solve -- Who was Jack the Ripper? Were the princes in the tower really murdered? Did any of the Tsars children survive the slaughter in Russia? But I’m not sure I would like to have been a fly on their corpses to find out.

So I’d really like to go back to see if King Arthur ever really existed at all and if he did, was Merlin a kindly, elderly wizard or a foul, smelly old witchdoctor who wandered around half-naked, slicing open the bellies of living slaves to read the oracles in their intestines.

Karen - Thanks so much for giving so generously of your time and for the fascinating insight 
into the background to The Vanishing Witch.

 Jaffa and I have loved hosting this interview and wish you continuing success with your writing.

***

Find more about Karen on her website

           

The Vanishing Witch is published 14th August and is available from all good book retailers.

Karen is offering one lucky UK winner the chance to own a copy of 

The Vanishing Witch in this fabulous giveaway.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

*~Good Luck~*