Stonehenge

Rating:
Summary: I Think I Have Found Cornwell's Worst Novel.
Review: "Stonehenge" by Bernard Cornwell is a complete departure for the author of the Sharpe series. Frankly, I didn't like it very much. Maybe it was the pacing, which was slow or the character development, which was shallow. I never got the sense or feel of the times. Luckily for me I picked the book up at a bargain otherwise I would have felt cheated. I finished it only because Cornwell is one of my favorite authors.

Perhaps it is because I couldn't identify with the main characters. The lead characters are brothers, namely Saban, Camaban and Lengar. Saban the protagonist, is the perpetually young warrior, hero and builder. Saban's crippled brother Camaban, is the tribe's sorcerer, kook and priest. Saban's oldest brother Lengar, is the obligatory antagonist, villain and tribal chieftain. None of these characters are interesting, all of them seem merely to be props to tell the story. I can accept this type of fiction by some other authors, especially when used in short stories but here it seems shallow. I don't think Cornwell allowed the readers a chance to get into the heads of these people.

I think most people knew it took Britain's Neolithic inhabitants years and years to build Stonehenge. After all they barely seem to master fire, metal tools and planting crops. But I thought the story could have been much more interesting and exciting. Cornwell paints a picture of people who were brutal war-like savages. They applied blue tattoo scars to their bodies to signify the number of people they have killed. Ordinarily Cornwell is the perfect author for this type of job, all of his other works are great but he never carries it off.

Rating:
Summary: A great read.
Review: I bought this book after reading a copy from the library. Its a great addition to any book collection.

The story is set during the bronze age, such an archaic and mysterious time. The story is centered around the construction of stonehenge, and though no one knows why it was created, the author puts forward a great fictional explination.

The story is fascinating, as with all of Bernard Cornwells books you get a great deal of knowledge from each chapter and you get a real sense of what life is like for the characters portrayed in the book.

The late Stone Age - Early bronze age is a time not much is known about. From a few archeological discoveries historians have pieced together a rough idea of how life was for those early humans and Bernard Cornwell takes that one step further in this great book, Stonehenge.

Rating:
Summary: Not worth the effort.
Review: I have finally hauled my way through to the end of Stonehenge. There were a number of times when I was close to not bothering, but I had hoped that in the end something interesting or significant would happen to make it worth while. It didn't.

The problem with many of Bernard Cornwell's novels is the lack of depth of the characters, and this is even more noticeable here. It doesn't matter so much in books like the Sharpe series, as the recounting of historical events is fascinating. The "Sharpe" charaters have familiar sounding names and we know the world they inhabit. The problem with Stonehenge however is that the environment and culture are so foreign that it is impossible to relate to them.

In a novel like this therefore, it is imperative that the characters are interesting, well developed, and important to the story. This is not the case with Stonehenge. By the end of the book we feel like we know no more about the main characters than we did at the beginning. Traumatic events (such as the death and rape of friends and relatives) happen to most of the characters, but they are recounted with all the emotion of a shopping list.

Stonehenge may be an excellent work of historical fiction in the way it explains the construction of the stone circle and the philosophy behind it, but that could have been achieved in 100 pages. The rest of the book is devoted to the lives of characters with so little emotional depth that it is very difficult to care what happens to them.

Rating:
Summary: A richly imagined and charactered historical novel.
Review: Stonehenge [2000 B.C.] by Bernard Cornwell

Bernard Cornwell's particular literary talent lies in his marvelously rich imagination and ability to extrapolate relevant, intelligent, and highly entertaining stories from the merest and scantest of archeological and historical data. In this novel, he vividly imagines the people who built Stonehenge well before the time of Christ. His characters are always very realistic and well relatable to 21st Century readers. Whether writing of the sea in his Sharpe series or dealing with Arthurian material in his Warlord Chronicles, all with grand stage settings and unforgettable background events, the lives of ordinary people become as true and relevant as the latest breaking news. This present book deals with three brothers as different as brothers can be, but united in their vision of what the great temple we know as Stonehenge should be. Cornwell includes a lot of creative pagan mythology here and the influence of such scholars as Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung can readily be discerned. But don't be misled; this is still an action-packed page-turner as are all of Cornwell's books. Great for those exhausting dog days of August.

Rating:
Summary: A Neolithic swashbuckler!
Review: The only thing harder to research than a historical novel is a pre-historical one. Cornwell has made a serious effort to understand the how the Neolithic looked in southern Britain, then fit plot and characters into that landscape. It's an exciting story, full of duplicity, heroics, deeply held feelings and almost convincing people.

Centred, as the title suggests, on the great stone monument on Salisbury Plain, he builds a narrative suggesting the motivation and labour involved in building this ancient site. He uses two trinities to develop his story. One trinity is comprised of brothers who represent material, mysticism and morality. The other is three who, by stretching your imagination, might be Mother, Maiden and Crone of the slassical witchcraft Sisterhood, although those identities shift drastically as the story progresses. The clash of greedy warlords with messianic figures is like something out of Sir Walter Scott. Cornwell's technique makes thrilling reading while upholding modern standards of justice and rewards for the good. The good, of course, don't come through unblemished or painlessly, but they survive. All the excitement and maneuvering raise this book a step above the modern fantasy novel, but the step is a small one.

If you're looking for adventure with an unusual twist, this is the book for you. You will be taken back in time, through some spatial adjustment, but most importantly, view a society very different from the one you know. Prepare yourself for a harsh existence while remembering that "progress" is a word with many definitions. Perhaps there's some benefit in reading the "Historical note" at the back first, then delving into Cornwell's sources, before returning to this fictional account. All of his resources are at least as readable as this book, and infinitely more informative, if not as imaginative. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]