Good King Harry: A Novel (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

This book was surprisingly interesting and well written. I like Giardina's writing style and love history.

excellent author

As a reader of historical fiction, I picked this book up at an antique store. The coverline on the back caught my interest as well as the title. How could a king be good? The author takes the reader into a lost land of long ago when chivalry was still the vogue but being weakened by it's duplicity, striving for honor and glory but only for the right and titled - what care they for the common people? Young Henry is introduced in the first scene when he refuses to submit to his father's wishes - that he attend a joust, something he has grown to detest as a youth. The oldest of five sons and a daughter, at age eleven, Harry (as he is called) is sent to Oxford which he loves and where he meets a long-time friend, Richard Courtenay, his tutor and a young man slated for service in the church. The story unravels with great detail of character and events. Harry is taken to serve Richard III as a hostage to prevent his father (Lord Bolingbroke) from attacking the king who has banished him to France for being a traitor. Harry is now a pawn and when his father successfully overthrows Richard, his life becomes even more precarious as the Prince of Wales and future king of England, a death sentence for most men. He struggles with his inner feelings of good versus the evil he sees in the world. If he is to become king, he must survive at all costs. This alone forces him into trials not of his choosing, escaping two assassination attempts while still Prince of Wales, forced by his father to subdued an uprising in his beloved Wales, forced to fight against his former mentor, Lord Percy, in the Battle of Shrewsbury. The list goes on and on. Through all this, the reader shares his torments, his joys, his successes and his failures.I felt very close to this great king and wanted him to succeed which he did at great cost of love and friendship. As kings go he was a good king, striving to know his subjects, low as well as high-born, always thinking of England ahead of his own needs and desire, wishing that he could be remembered as a good and kind leader. He also had failures that he could not forget, his best friends all dead either at his hand or in battle, great lords laid low for his purposes. I think the book demonstrates most to me what a great leader must endure, criticism, rebuke, self-doubt and longing for a better end because of high moral standards. Is not that what all of us as human beings strive with in our lives, though on a much smaller scale?

Denise Giardina's "Good King Harry" is an in-depth exploration of one of England's most beloved characters and kings, Henry V. A comet who briefly streaked across the sky of northwest Europe, "Good King Harry" was a man who knew little of defeat yet experienced much loss, a man who bent his knee to no man but gave his soul to his beloved Welsh lass, Merryn, and a man who sought to bring peace with the sword.Told in the first person (the language is more archaic, and slightly less accessible, than that used by other authors of medieval historical fiction such as Sharon Kay Penman or Bernard Cornwell) by Harry himself, "Good King Harry" spends as much time on Harry as a youth as it does as king. The eldest son of a warrior king, Harry is a bitter disappointment as he prefers wrestling and racing to the noble joust . . . and he also has the temerity to enjoy a little book-learnin'. The father-son disputes between king and prince are packed with as much baggage as any parent-sibling rivalry, only also with the added threat that father and son are capable of bringing swords to bear. Harry spends much of his youth balanced on the razor's edge between wilful disobedience and treason, and this battle weighs the otherwise radiant spirit down.True, Harry does find his Falstaff in Sir John Oldcastle, who may not be as wondrous a character as Shakespeare's creation but is still a worthy comrade in cups as Harry raids the brothels and taverns of England. This relationship sours in the end, but not as expected . . . and it is a bitter schism indeed. Still, we get a lot of wenching from our beloved Prince Hal, and Giardina does not shy away from Harry diving into various beds and bottles.Most of us know our Henry V from Shakespeare, and Giardina's Henry is true to Shakespeare's creation, even if not nearly as poetic. Her novel takes a broader scope of Henry's life, and through this wider expanse we meet Henry's true love. The Prince of Wales reluctantly goes to war in Wales to bring the rebels to heel, and in the course of doing so develops a love for his fellow Welshmen, and in particular for a Welsh maid, Merryn. A hotly contested love, Merryn is as fiery a spirit as Henry and not burdened by the weight of nobility. Giardina creates a romance for the ages with these two, and their bitter early parting is the most moving passage in the book.Harry, as we all know, eventually becomes king and raids France. The Shakespearean Henry V is not nearly as conflicted about this raid as Giardina's, and these heavy doubts make Henry a wonderfully conflicted character. Giardina can write a battle scene very well, although she does not spend as much time with the battles as, say, Bernard Cornwell, she still throws a bunch of action at the reader.But the high points of the book are easily Henry's emotional peaks and valleys as he contemplates his loves and his losses and the heavy price a king must pay to lead his nation. All in all, "Good King Harry" depicts a wonderful man who achieves great things -- some of them terrible, some of them astounding, but all of them great. While not the best historical fiction you can pick up, this is still an excellent book that will please fans of the Shakespearean Prince Hal/Henry V as well as those who have never experienced the Bard's take. A worthy choice.