‘The Season of the Beast’ by Andrea H Japp
Published by Gallic Books. 14th August 2008. ISBN 978-1-906040-10-9
This is the first of a two-book story set in France in 1304. The historical background is the struggle between the Papacy, now based in Avignon in southern France, and King Philip the Fair of France who wishes to control the papacy. To do so he must annihilate the power of the two great mediaeval monastic orders, the Knights Templar and the Knights Hospitaller. The King, or his cronies, are even prepared to countenance the poisoning of the current Pope. Andrea Japp, despite her Anglo-sounding name, is French.
The main narrative is that of the young widowed noblewoman Agnes de Souarcy. She is beset by troubles on all sides, in particular her feudal lord and half-brother, the bestial Eudes de Larnay with his incestuous desires for her and for her twelve-year-old daughter Mathilde. She also must protect the young boy Clement born posthumously to the heretic Sybille and taken by Agnes into her family. Clement himself is wise beyond his years and loves to visit the nearby convent where the Abbess, Eleusie de Beaufort, has a remarkable library. Only Eudes’ overlord, Artus d’Anthon, wants to protect Agnes. Meanwhile, in the nearby forest, travellers are being set on by a creature (man? beast?) which tears them apart with steel claws. Just one person escapes, the young girl Esquive d’Estouville. Intertwined with this narrative is that of the idealistic yet spiritually tormented Knight Hospitaller, Francesco de Leone, nephew of Eleusie de Beaufort, who is travelling from Cyprus to France with the purpose of preventing the French king from installing his own nominee as Pope. Another narrative concerns the terrifying Dominican Inquisitor Nicolas Florin into whose clutches, thanks to the perfidious Eudes, Agnes falls at the end of the book. Presumably all these narratives come to a conclusion in the second book, The Breath of the Rose.
Gallic Press is a new imprint specialising in translations of French historical and crime fiction. It is supported by the French Ministry of Culture/Centre National du Livre, perhaps in the hope of doing for French crime fiction what the Wallander series has done for Swedish crime fiction. The Season of the Beast is obviously aimed at readers who like novels such as Dan Brown's The De Vinci Code, Kate Mosse's Labyrinth, Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, and even the classic French novels of the 50's by Zoe Oldenbourg. But if you want to find out what happens in the end, you’ll also have to buy The Breath of the Rose.
------
Radmila May
Other titles by Andrea H: Japp: The Breath of the Rose