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** spoiler alert ** i could talk for paragraphs and paragraphs about joan of arc. her history, how i interpret it and what it means to me, and all the ways this book failed to meet my expectations. lol. but i’ll try to be brief.

katherine chen and i are much the same in that we have intensely personal concepts of and relationships to joan. we overlap in some ways: i too believe joan’s visions are less important than her willpower, her charisma, her victories against all odds. i loved the idea that joan’s gifts were a kind of genius, much like the genius of a great artist or composer.

faith is complicated for joan in this book, and she’s not a pure, virtuous virgin who miraculously and meekly cheers on armies. she’s a warrior, the best one alive, and she fights and bleeds and suffers. she’s proud, even arrogant; sarcastic and rude; yet also kind, selfless, and endlessly courageous.

HOWEVER.

i understand history doesn’t always make the best story, and i understand some choices chen made here to adapt a complicated history into a compelling tale. but when politics, events, and even historical perspectives are ignored, it gets a little dicey.

in this book, joan’s father is abusive. but why must she be abused to be strong? why must she be abused to be great?

plus, joan’s initial motivation is her sister catherine’s rape and subsequent suicide. hated that. it’s such an easy and predictable cop-out, honestly, and there’s no reason it had to happen. chen didn’t want to write angelic voices and visitations—but surely there’s a better motivation to give her, one more reflective of the incredible willpower and self-belief that joan possessed.

additionally, her discovery and journey to court are portrayed as mostly an accident, nothing she sought or facilitated on her own but something she fell into. this i think ties in with the motivation above—it’s hard to write this event as joan’s doing when she doesn’t have voices in her head to guide her.

and i’m not saying she did hear voices. i don’t know if she did, but if nothing else, she knew and believed in what she had to do. that’s what makes her story a great one, and taking that agency away from her was a mistake.

another mistake was modernization. i hate the impulse of historical fiction writers to give their characters modern beliefs and perspectives. don’t be a coward. it’s okay to acknowledge that people 800 years ago viewed life differently than we do, and in fact i think it’s incredibly important and valuable to consider and explore those perspectives.

then, the gravest errors.

the novel itself, and its execution, is lacking. it’s very unevenly paced, spending almost 100 pages on her childhood and about 20 on the siege of orléans. huge events are skipped over, even battles, which given the emphasis on joan’s military prowess is surprising.

and then the book ends right as she’s captured. sure, it’s written well, if not overwritten a bit (side ramble, the writing is a bit too in love with itself, and it felt very much like chen was trying to imitate hilary mantel but without enough subtlety or skill. why did every single character speak the same and monologue for two pages?).

my big question is—why flinch away from the most pivotal moments of joan’s life? it felt almost like chen saw it as too much of a challenge, and it is! it would be impossible to do joan’s trial, torture, and execution justice. but chen spent pages upon pages exploring joan as a character. let it pay off at her darkest hours. we even have the (flawed) transcripts from her trial!!!

that willpower, that charisma, it stayed with joan in battle, in a courtroom, in a cell. it stayed with her as she jumped from a window, as she recanted and then recanted her recantation, and as she died.

it just seems a shame, a mistake, and ultimately a failure to avoid those scenes. to pretend some overwritten inner monologue compensates for it.

it’s not that i’m bloodthirsty or morbid and i want to see her burn at the stake. if anything, that would be almost too excruciating to read.

it’s just that if you’re going to write joan’s story, one with so much wonder and so much pain, you might as well try to do it justice.

there were beautiful, poignant moments in this book that took my breath away. but another of joan’s great powers is that she means many things to many people. chen sees her story differently than i do; which just means i’ll have to try exploring it myself.