Dan Jones has weaved a colourful tapestry of authentic Middle Ages people mixed with real events and the result is a stunning book. I will freely admit to a dearth of knowledge about The Black Prince's personality but I'd not expected this version.

An award-winning historian, journalist and television presenter Dan Jones work includes The Plantagenets, The Wars of the Roses, and The Templars.They walk; they ride; they fight and when they win, burn down whole villages, killing or chasing away the common folk who live there. It is gripping history and story combined and definitely provides a provocative way in to a still little known conflict. Frequently carried out after many days of travelling by foot, in barren landscapes and unrelenting heat. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others.

It probably wasn’t much help that, it being war, they were as likely to die within a few chapters of you meeting them as survive.Often sent in first, much like our modern day elite forces, they went in blind not knowing what was awaiting them and it’s this opening scene that endeared me to the men instantly. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. The Essex Dogs get a front row seat in the expedition and eventually find themselves involved with the military leaders around Edward. In this book Jones gives no hint of this budding ability in any way and is rather harsh in developing this character. If you hesitate before picking up a novel based on historical fiction, don’t dither over dropping this one into your holiday reading bag – author Dan Jones has brought the past vividly, gloriously, and sometimes hilariously to life.

Michaelides seems also to be dipping into the world of Edgar Allan Poe, offering an unreliable narrator who feels more like a literary exercise. Of course one of the ways humans defend themselves in such situations is through humor and that is very much a part of this narrative.This is the heart of the story that keeps you emotionally engaged amongst all the brutality, all the horrors of war and all the injustices we are exposed to as the reader. Much of the story concerns the progress of the army across northern France, where villages and towns are routinely plundered and pillaged in the most ruthless manner. Entertaining and displaying a deep knowledge of the way wars were fought during the Hundred Tears War, this was a solid story. Also, most caracthers feel like tropes (the big angry Scot, the foul mouthed army commander, the spoiled prince, etc). The POV characters, as expected, were a bit more fleshed out than the others, though, and you could still root for them (and also, this is something I expect will be improved on as the series goes on).