Review of Between Two Fires: An Epic Tale of Medieval Horror by Christopher Buehlman
Horror isn't my favorite genre, but a medieval-set quest and a battle between good and evil is an irresistible setup for me. I was intrigued by the latter elements while nervously cringing through the former.
It's 1348, and Thomas, formerly a knight but now fallen in with brigands, encounters Delphine, a young, innocent girl whose father has died of the Black Death, which is ravishing France.
Thomas almost immediately falls back into his honorable past persona, protecting Delphine from abuse even as he is clearly personally broken from loss and generally hopeless about the state of the world. We soon see that he cannot resist diving into danger, and that he begrudgingly feels it is his duty to do what he can for the people he can--even if he seems to assume each day is likely to be his last.
Delphine tells Thomas that a battle is afoot between fallen angels--led by Lucifer--and heaven above. She must be delusional, but as Thomas reluctantly accompanies her toward Avignon, along with a local priest (a wonderful, wonderfuly faulted character) they encounter stranger and stranger events, and Thomas begins to believe that she is telling the truth--and is possibly an angel in human form.
I admittedly missed the subtitle of this one before I began reading it, so I wasn't prepared for the horror genre of the novel. While the gore and terrifying elements aren't my personal favorite aspects of a story, I was intrigued by the medieval setting, the constant, violent struggle between good and evil, and the precious preservation of innocence--then a shift into resigned existence within the cruelties of reality.
This is dark dark dark, with constant clashes between good and evil, crises of faith, and horrifying monsters bent on terror and destruction. I was cringing as I listened to various agonies, which compounded as the story progressed.
The ending offers modest, heartwarming hope out of the rubble and smoking destruction that has been wrought upon the world in Buehlman's novel.
I listened to Between Two Fires as an audiobook through my library and Libby. The male voicing of young Delphine felt at first like a caricature, and it distracted me, but I eventually became used to it.
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Christopher Buehlman is also the author of The Blacktongue Thief and The Daughters’ War.
Please check out other Bossy medieval-set reads and horror reads.
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