From Publishers Weekly
Chamberlin, moving from DAW for this third installment of the Joan of Arc Tapestries, again mixes above-average medievalism and convoluted narrative. She picks up Joan's historical career from her first appearance at the dauphin's raggle-taggle court through his coronation at Rheims as a fulfillment of Merlin's prophecy. Much of the story along the way is taken up by Joan's lifting the siege of Orleans by charismatically securing the loyalty of able lieutenants and by outright magic. The latter is provided by Father Jann, Merlin's heir in witchcraft, and Gilles de Rais (aka Bluebeard), a talented bon vivant who believes that Joan (or La Pucelle) is his destined true love. The battle sequences are formidable both in vividness and detail, as are the magic sequences. It takes some suspension of disbelief to accept Chamberlin's kinder, gentler Gilles de Rais (who has come down to us as a pedophile, mass murderer and Satanist), but the story is otherwise credible and absorbing if sometimes slow. At the end, the stage is set for La Pucelle's destined fate, and readers who have come this far will probably want to see it.
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From Booklist
Chamberlin resumes the Joan of Arc Tapestries, begun in
The Merlin of St. Gilles' Well (1999) and continued in
The Merlin of the Oak Wood (2001), with La Pucelle now at center stage as a heavenly, or perhaps diabolical, gender-bending vision-figure who straddles the line between witchcraft and mystic Christianity. In Chamberlin's interpretation, Jehanne was a follower of the Old Religion and a member of a coven that also included her beloved dauphin, Charles. Aided by the magician Yann, who is barely disguised as a priest, and protected by the obsessive love of the noble Gilles, the Maid throws herself into battle after battle. With witches dancing spells nearby, she advances to evict the occupying English and free besieged Orleans, then surges overland to Charles' coronation at Rheims. Well told and full of magic and romance, this volume clearly sets up its sequel, in which the Maid will die. But will she perish willingly, a substitute sacrifice for Charles? The ending of this volume leaves all possibilities open.
Patricia MonaghanCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
