Review: The Knight and the Boar
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 11 13, 2011
To be perfectly honest, as soon as I saw a new Heppner book, I barely read the synopsis and just downloaded it. While the Doom Star series appears to be his coup de maitre, his other works are equally compelling, and I've yet to be disappointed.This book is set in a time period that is probably the pinnacle of the English feudal system, and when Chivalry is becoming highly codified. The author takes a lot of historical incidents and presents them in a way that is eminently readable. Much could be said about the period setting, so I'll be brief, but one example is a discussion of how the legends of King Arthur transformed from heroic Briton legends into French Romance.Cord is what I would consider to be a "typical Heppner hero", and that's not a snub. If you're familiar with Happner's heroes, they're often larger than life, but developed in quite a realistic manner. Cord knows who he is, and who he was, and that causes conflict and confusion as he tries to adhere to his ideology that is in direct opposition to the class society of the time. For me, however, my favorite character is actually Hob. A secondary character with a surprising background.A few points of editing and some anachronisms do not detract from the story. It did end rather abruptly and with decisiveness. But I do wish we could have followed the story a bit more, beyond the main conflict resolution.