The Battle

"All able men must fight."

Writer: Simon Guerrier

Format: Audio

Released: June 2013

Series: Graceless 3.02

Featuring: Abby, Zara

Synopsis

"What is it – history? What are you looking at when you study it?"

Ninth of August 991 AD. Abby and Zara are on the Essex coast in the rain, searching for a man they loved and lost.

The local people are terrified of the savage pirates waiting across the water. The bold and brave local earl is ready to wage battle to free his people from such fear.

After all they've been through, Abby and Zara only want to help. But future history has already been written. They're about to find out how much more they can still lose...

Verdict

The Battle was a very good continuation of the second series of Graceless! I thought this was a great follow up to The Edge and leads us into the finale in a very nice way. I liked the shift between settings of the Archive and the Battle of Maldon and it almost had a partial feeling of being like a Companion Chronicle with the narration and the nature of the way the story was told. I liked how Zara was conversing with Chi and their talk of choice and history was intriguing, especially once the books started to be erased from the collection! The predominant focus was of course on the Battle of Maldon and I liked how the sisters arrived a day before battle. The use of the 991 AD setting was very good and from the off they were focused on looking for Marek despite it being the eve of a Viking brawl. Burtnoth was a very good character and I liked how despite his Earl status he appreciated the boldness with which Abby and Zara approached and were talking to him. The shift between settings worked well and for Zara, the events we were listening to in 991 had already happened. History was being eaten up and I found it interesting that Abby alone was holding Chi together with her powers. The description of history being like a tide and how one person alone couldn't swim against it was excellent, especially with the addition of how things were caught up in the flow. I liked that a lot. The sisters being seen as valkyries was magnificent and it was a nice moment where Olaf was shown that conquest was unnecessary and wrong and Abby actually ended up stopping the battle. The consequences that stemmed from that were pretty compelling and damning. Things needed fixing, so they had come to Chi as she was a historical expert on the Battle of Maldon. I thought that was a nice touch as they needed helping putting history back together. The sisters trying to broker a peace between the Burtnoth and the Vikings was fun, especially with the reaction to the idea that the Vikings would be paid not to attack. There were efforts to build the relationship, but they weren't ever going to be come into fruition.  I loved the links the events of the story and battle had with the historic poem that depicted what happened at Maldon and the messenger becoming the sisters and replacing the 'he' in that originally was very good. They had changed history there, but not to a great extent. The battle scenes were decent, but I would have preferred more action and less blocks of narration as that would have enhanced the excitement considerably. Abby appealing to the honour of Burtnoth in stopping the battle was excellent and I liked how there was the dilemma of not slaughtering the Vikings, but also not being allowed to let them retreat and regroup. The idea of Abby and Zara being drawn to the thrill of the battle was terrific and fun to play with. Zara misunderstanding the concept of falling with one's superior once Burtnoth was in fact killed was excellent and reminded you that these characters are far from normal. The sisters going back in time to before the start of the battle was good and initially they'd made it longer to ensure that Olaf suffered more loss, but this changed history considerably to the extent that he was never made King of Norway and subsequently, the Battle of Hastings didn't even occur! I wonder what impact that would have on the history of the British monarchy! The pair had obviously gone too far with changing history, but they tried and tried again to put things right but they kept making it worse. The hole they were creating in history was getting bigger and bigger with history being pulled apart at the seam. Chi knew the battle though, and she was brought to the battleground. The sisters didn't want to send anyone to their deaths despite history already being written, they needed to know that deaths were important to ensuring it flowed correctly. I thought it was brilliant to have Chi seeing the difference of history unfolding literally before her eyes and after all she had studied and devoted in her life, it was just a bloody battle at the end of the day and she stood back and allowed things to happen as written. The arrival of the time ship that would be Persephone as we knew from The Dark and all along Marek was not at the battle which seemed a slight let down. Zara at least saving something and that being the town was good. The ending with the Archive locating Marek after all was intriguing, but even more so once it turned out that when they first meet Marek, it was when Abby and Zara died. That sets things up very nicely. Overall, a great audio!

Rating: 8/10