Book Review

[kenjari]

Count Bohemond
by Alfred Duggan

This is an older novel about the First Crusade, specifically, Bohemond I, prince of Antioch. He was originally a minor Norman lord from Apulia. His military prowess, particularly his talent for tactics and strategy, led him to become one of the leaders of the Crusaders and to be particularly instrumental in the conquest of Antioch.
Despite the nature of the subject matter, I tired of this book very quickly. Duggan concentrates almost exclusively on the military aspects of the story, so that the plot is nothing more than a series of battles and sieges across Asia Minor and into the middle east. With little else going on in the book, it quickly becomes surprisingly repetitive. There's a little bit of politics among the leaders of the Crusade, but Duggan does not get very far into it beyond how it affects the various battles and sieges. There's very little attention given to Bohemond's relationships or inner life. And there's not much in the way of description of the details of life on Crusade.
Duggan also seems to have surprisingly little to say about his protagonist or the events he depicts. There's really nothing there beyond "see this cool Crusader and all the cool things he did". Plus, duggan takes a very simplistic view of the Crusade itself: the Crusaders are awesome, the Greeks and the Turks aren't. No exploration of any themes or anything, robbing the book of any real substance.

Comments

[ladybird97.livejournal.com]

Bohemond! Oh, it's such a disappointment to hear that this book wasn't good. Bohemond really was cool, and a book that actually tried to get into his head would have the potential to be fabulous! It's also disappointing and inaccurate (not to mention offensive!) that Duggan depicted the non-crusaders negatively. Even if he's writing from Bohemond's POV, that doesn't help, because Bohemond made lots of alliances with the Greeks and Turks alike, and had pretty good working relationships with them.

(mumble. yes, I've done a lot of research on this :)

[kenjari.livejournal.com]

From this book, I would never have guessed that Bohemond had good working relationships with Greeks and Turks, because even when he's working with them, he's portrayed as being uniformly contemptuous of them. To be fair, he's generally depicted as pretty arrogant, so he's contemptuous of the French knights as well.

[ladybird97.livejournal.com]

heh. Well, Bohemond being contemptuous of a lot of people, I can believe :) But he was also a really savvy politician and good negotiator. In particular (as I've looked at in my research) he was friends with a Muslim man in Antioch named Firuz. Sigh. I'm disappointed that Duggan didn't take the opportunity to show that.

[kenjari.livejournal.com]

Firuz is a minor character as the traitorous (to the Turks) Antiochan/Turk who provides a way for Bohemond to breach the defenses. They are not portrayed as being friends particularly, just useful to each other. It's indeed a shame Duggan didn't do anything with that part of the story.
On the other hand, my reading this novel did cause me to discover and repeatedly listen to this cool CD on Naxos: Music in the Time of the Crusades (http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=125589&album_group=14).
(Fordham has a subscription to Naxos Online, so you should be able to access it from the library website. Once in Naxos, just search on "crusades" - it should be the one of the first few results.)

[kenjari.livejournal.com]

Also, you make Bohemond much more interesting than Duggan did! Have you written anything about him?

[ladybird97.livejournal.com]

Aww, thanks! Actually, I have - the friendship between Bohemond and Firuz was the subject of my Very First Article :) Would you like me to send it to you?

Thank you for the CD recommendation too! That looks _awesome_. As soon as I have my Fordham library account set up, I will absolutely check it out!

[kenjari.livejournal.com]

Yes, please!