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I have a terrible history with beautiful cover designs providing a smokescreen for below-average historical fiction novels. A small selection: the come-hither gold foiled clouds of Washington Black, the delightful buttercup yellow endpapers of The Essex Serpent and now this bright and cheerful Joan concoction.

The cover AND the NYT review seemed to promise me something fun and punchy. The queen of historical fiction herself - my idol - Hilary Mantel blurbed the cover

"It is as if Chen has crept inside a statue and breathed a soul into it, re-creating Joan of Arc as a woman for our time"

hmmmmm.... I don't know if I want Joan as a woman of our time, a tale full of plucky self-determination and not a vision in sight. In truth, it is much less historical fiction than a story of a troubled teen that has some adventures with a bow and arrow in someplace vaguely medieval.

Unfortunately, I can't avoid the notion that Mantel would have done real service to the story of Joan and crucially the historical milieu that produced her. The author shied away from almost all the significant historical events of Joan's life, including the significant battles and her trial and execution. That's like writing about the Titanic and stopping the story just as everyone sits down for dinner.
So what are we left with? It's Joan fan-fiction, basically. Joan as a 6-year-old takes up blacksmithing, Joan hits the bull's eye with a long bow on her first try, invincible Joan with superhuman strength lifts her father off the ground, Joan learns to read and write effortlessly.

* Sigh *

I stayed only for the occasional mention of Lampreys and Pottage