2015; 306 pages. Book 5 (out of 35) in the “Chronicles of Brother Hermitage” series. Full Title: “Hermitage, Wat and Some Druids:
We’re Going on a Murder”. New Author? : No.
Genre : Cozy Mystery; Humorous Historical
Fiction; British Humor; Druids. Overall
Rating : 8*/10.
Oh what a joy! Brother Hermitage, the weaver Wat, and the other weaver Cwen are going on a
trip! To the exotic land of Wales! At the request of King William, no less. At least that’s what William’s
second-in-command, Le Pedvin, says.
King William isn’t funding the
trip, but that shouldn’t be a problem.
Hospitality is always extended to traveling monks like Brother Hermitage. Religion has its perks.
Alas, they have been given a
formidable task—to locate one of William’s agents. He was last heard from somewhere in Wales, but who knows where he is now. And since the Welsh hate the Normans as much as the
Saxons do, the agent could be either dead or alive by now.
Royal agents come and go, and
in truth William and Le Pedvin probably don’t care whether the missing one is a
corpse or not. But in the last message
received from him, the agent said he’d discovered a huge stash of gold nearby.
And that gold means William is very
anxious to locate and speak to the agent face-to-face.
What’s To Like...
Hermitage, Wat and
Some Druids is the fifth book in Howard of Warwick’s
“Chronicles of Brother Hermitage” series. It’s also the fifth book I’ve read in
this series, albeit not in chronological order.
The tale is told from three
points of view. The main one recounts
Hermitage, Cwen, and Wat’s misadventures, dealing for the most part with how
their entourage swells, despite their best efforts. The second plot thread is set in a Welsh
village, where druidic visions and prophecy are rife, The third plotline involves the local noble in
that village’s area, Lord Bermo, who's become quite interested in what's going on in his
territory. The reader can of course count on all three
threads eventually coming together.
Any story that has
druids in it will resonate with me; druidism is my choice whenever circumstances require me to list my
religious preference. Here, their “magick” powers are at some times impressive, and other times mundane, which works surprisingly well.
The reader joins Hermitage as he journeys
westward from London to the Welsh border.
Along the way we stop in places like Staines, Silchester, and
Wanborough, and in each case pick up unwanted followers. At one point, we even learn the art of “straggling”, which was a blast.
The ending is good, being mostly “cozy-ish” and logical, and with a couple ofout-of-the-blue plot
twists, which neither Hermitage or I saw coming.
Everything works out well for all concerned, which frankly was not an
easy task.
Ratings…
Amazon:
4.4/5
based on 726 ratings and 81 reviews.
Goodreads: 4.30/5 based on 282
ratings and 20 reviews.
Excerpts...
“And who might you be?”
“More,” said More.
“And who might you be, my pretty fellow?”
Clearly mad.
“That’s me name.” More sounded very proud of this.
“Well, well, master That. I can see you are of our number.”
“Eh?”
It took a lot to confuse More, mainly because he spent most of his time
confusing other people. (loc. 2692)
The figure was more like a hermit than most
hermits Hermitage had ever seen. He had
been tempted to the isolated life himself, and even directed to it on one or
two occasions. The problem had always
been that the hermits he met seemed to have no gainful employment outside of
starving and begging. They never
considered great arguments. They never
studied illuminating texts. They just
sat in caves and thought. (loc.
3924)
Kindle Details…
Hermitage,
Wat and Some Druids currently sells for $3.99 at Amazon. The other books in the series range in price
from $0.99 to $4.99, with the more recent the book,
the more it costs.
“What’s the point of having the upper hand,” Cwen argued, “if you can’t drop it on people?” (loc. 2598)
Hermitage, Wat and Some Druids is a cozy
mystery, and therefore is almost profanity-free. I spotted just four instances
in the entire book, all of them referencing the Underworld. I don’t recall any blood, gore, or adult
situations.
The bigger issue was the editing. Typos abound, most
of them of the punctuation ilk. Missing
commas in the dialogue were the most numerous; I counted 22 of them. Missing quotation marks also showed up
several times, along with a few commonplace typos such as solider/soldier.
But I’ve come to accept those slip-ups in this series, because along with them comes a fascinating historical fiction mystery
set in the 11th-century Britain. To boot, the text is loaded with wit and satire, which keeps my interest just fine.
For me, Hermitage, Wat and Some
Druids was a splendid and satisfying read.
It is fast-paced and has a nice “Medieval" feel to
it. I’m tempted to make my next Brother
Hermitage read one of the more recent ones to see if the editing improves as
the series progresses.
8 Stars. One last thing. Our heroes have a brief sojourn in Staines, which brought back poignant memories for me because I've sojourned there as well. It makes me wonder if Brother Hermitage will at some time journey to nearby Chertsey, where I have also enjoyed the hospitality of friends.