The Greatest Knight

2.5 stars. The episodic nature of the narrative hindered the flow of the story, but since it covers about 40 years (if you count the flashbacks to William's childhood) I guess it made sense. I probably would have liked it more if I hadn't recently read George Martin's Knight of the Seven Kingdoms which presents another take on the “penniless knight making good through the tournament circuit” theme. Martin's stories are not set in a real medieval Europe of course, but there is a liveliness about them this lacks.

I'm bumping it up a half star because of Chadwick's fidelity to her source material. I studied Marshal years ago as a graduate student in medieval history and was happy to see names I hadn't read or thought about in a long time in this novelization of Marshal's life. Nothing stood out as too outlandish or utterly unbelievable, which is much more than I can say for some other “historical” fiction.