Review of Herbert Hayens's “My Sword’s My Fortune”

 

Set in the early 1650s, Herbert Hayens's My Sword’s My Fortune follows the career of young Albert, who arrives in Paris in search of a lord to pledge himself to. This turns out to be none other than Cardinal Mazarin.

This 1904 publication moves at a fast pace, featuring much conflict and intrigue. It has a lot to offer for historical fiction fans, and it’s a shame to see that – according to Goodreads statistics at least – it’s all but forgotten.

I would’ve rated this five stars if not for three factors, the main one being the amount of “telling” as opposed to “showing”. This is most apparent during battle scenes. For example:

“Turenne fought like an ordinary trooper, and as for Raoul, he outshone himself.”

Why not show how Turrenne fought? Why not give an example of how Raoul outshone himself? This sort of thing in novels always grates on me.

Another factor that spoiled the book somewhat for me was the overuse of adjectives. The two examples below use four adjectives each to describe a girl’s eyes:

“a fair girl with large, dreamy, tender blue eyes,” and “Her eyes were large, black, bright and flashing.”

The multiple adjectives result in clunky sentences, which disrupts the narrative flow. Whenever a new character is introduced, the author throws in a ton of adjectives all at once, rather than filtering them in here and there, or omitting them altogether if they’re not really needed.

Lastly, foreign phrases tend to crop up too often for my liking. “Peste!” is the most frequent one. I guess in means “Damn!” but not being gifted at French, I can't be sure. Other words/phrases like "Per Baccho!" and “Corbleu!” pop up, neither of which make sense to me.

Using foreign language in an English text is a pet hate of mine. It’s arrogant on the author’s part, as they take for granted that because they know what it means, so should the reader. If a reader like me is left in the dark, then I’m locked out of the story, which is the last thing any author should want to be responsible for. Always put the reader first, otherwise why bother?

The only exceptions are, of course, names of characters and of places, plus titles like “Monsieur” or “comtesse”, and phrases that don’t translate well, like “lettre de cachet”.

Apart from the above criticisms, though, I did enjoy this lively tale of musketeers, aristocrats, imposters, and intrigue.