Daily Mail

Frenzy in the French killing fields

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EITHNE FARRY ESSEX DOGS by Dan Jones (Head of Zeus £16.99, 464 pp)

HISTORIAN Jones’s first foray into fiction is battle-bloody, brutal and perfectly pitched.

The book opens in 1346, on the beaches of Normandy, as The Essex Dogs — a raggletagg­le, rough- and- ready bunch of ten mavericks, led by scarred, war-weary Loveday FitzTalbot — join an invading English force.

It’s nine years into the Hundred Years’ War. Loveday’s motley crew, including young Romford, nursing a drug addiction and on the run from his past, and Father, a ruined and dangerousl­y unpredicta­ble priest, are caught up in the increasing­ly violent conflict as they head to the hellish killing fields of Crecy.

Meticulous­ly researched and vibrantly told, Jones captures the fear and frenzy of the fight and the loyalty and kinship of the Dogs.

It’s a slaughtero­us, sweary, swaggering debut.

BABEL by R. F. Kuang (Harper Voyager £16.99, 560 pp)

MAGICAL silver, the tricky art of translatio­n, a secret society and the corrupting, insatiable greed of Western Imperialis­m collide in this wonderfull­y immersive, decidedly smart fourth novel from Kuang.

At the centre of this heartquick­ening, heart-breaking historical fantasy is Robin Swift, a Chinese orphan who is whisked away to England in 1829 by the mysterious, merciless Professor Richard Lovell. Linguistic­ally gifted, Robin heads to the Royal Institutio­n of Translatio­n at Oxford University, at Lovell’s behest.

Robin and his three close friends are entranced by their enchanting work in the elite world of Oxford’s dreaming spires, but it’s this precious work that underpins the nightmaris­h ambitions of The Establishm­ent. Swift finds his loyalty tested in this dazzling drama of dark academia.

STONE BLIND by Natalie Haynes (Mantle £18.99, 384 pp)

WHAT makes a monster is the

central question in Natalie Haynes’ wry, spry feminist take on the Medusa myth.

With a cast of pernickety immortals, intemperat­e, rapacious gods, jealous, unreasonab­le goddesses, a chorus of olives from a Greek grove and the commentary of the bickering snakes’ heads that make up Medusa’s serpentine tresses, Haynes’ story is an earthy, playful yet rage-filled upending of the Greek hero trope.

Haynes is gunning for problemati­c Perseus from the start. Here realistica­lly cast as a petulant, arrogant, fearful teenager, rather than an allconquer­ing champion — and the painfully self-aware, alltoo-human Medusa — cursed by Athena who is ‘vengeful and cruel, always blaming women for what men do to them’ — is his innocent victim.

Stone Blind is brilliantl­y brimful of these very neat reversals.

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