Back with Another Book Rant

It irks me that I can't finish a novel (that I'm writing) because I really seem to know what I'm doing when it comes to picking apart stylistic problems with novels I'm reading.

Today's exhibit:
The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell

I read an article the author wrote concerning his research on the Battle of Agincourt, thought he was engaging and well-researched and went to find his books. Lo, Mr. Cornwell had written this book about King Alfred (the Great), champion of literacy and bane of the Danish invasion...founder of England as we know it in a great many ways. I've read lots of historical fiction set in England, but most of it is 13th-16th century, and I was all about reading Danish conflict. Some of my favorite days in England were spent learning about the places the Danes had set up shop. (Yay York!) I was also really interested in how one goes about telling the story of this great English king from the POV of an English boy, taken as a slave by the Danes, who is then trained as a Danish warrior to go a-Viking. Really? What fascinating angle, so I gravitated towards this early history, rather than the book about the Battle of Agincourt, or Cornwell's retelling of the Arthur story.

And aaaaagh....Cornwell, while well-researched, has fallen into the biggest fricken' pit trap of first-person story telling there is. His narrator relays events like a person might relay their day. "Well, I got up and dressed in my [historically accurate and detailed] battle garb. We all boarded the long ship. It was [historically accurate description of the way a ship is built and how fierce all the Vikings looked]. While afloat, the old, blind scald told Odin's battle stories. They were quite inspiring. The battle was grim and bloody and people's guts were everywhere, but the battle rage came upon me and no one could stand. My leader rewarded me by giving me another arm band. I was growing quite wealthy. [Description of the use of metal jewelry as currency.]..., & c."

He even runs aground on my biggest pet peeve: "It was then I first saw [the man who would be King Alfred, the first woman I would love, this guy who I think is suspicious and weaselly, but with whom no one else takes issue until he tries to kill me..."] Oh for fuck's sake! Give us some build up.

And it's not like this guy can't create character and dialogue. I read too quickly through the places where he pauses to actually flesh out an interaction. He wrote a really brilliant scene of the young narrator, while still a slave boy, saving the war leader's daughter from a pack of other young boys. (This was a game of war and plunder that went a little too far.) There was suspense and character, and the punishments and rewards that followed did well to illustrate the way Cornwell researched systems of justice and allegiance that may have been in use at the time.
It advanced the plot of the narrator's move up the social ladder among his adopted people. It gave some character development, AND it fleshed out the cultural setting.

There is lamentably little of this, and I'm finding it really difficult to get through this book. I still am very curious about how this is going to become Alfred's story, and the way it is narrated indicates that it will make the shift sometime. However, it might be a miracle if I get there.

So let it be said, even if you are writing a first person narrative, you must still make it detailed. You cannot get away with info-dumping your way through a novel. We will appreciate your researching efforts so much more if try a little harder to show us the action. I want to feel squicked and nervous while reading a battle scene. I want to feel elated when the main characters make it through. I want to be amused by the budding relationship between the saucy new slave girl and the narrator. I want to slowly become suspicious of the man sent to kill the main character, and be either triumphant that I figured it out before the rest of the characters or startled by the treachery right along with them.

...and in a minor, unrelated complaint, I kind of want Danes that don't read like Beowulf caricatures. I understand that most of the Danes I'm reading about are the advance fighting/colonizing force, and that the Dane Next Door has yet to arrive in England, but come on! I bet they weren't all ready to feast on the flesh of their enemies and laugh in the face of danger at the drop of a hat. Facing farmers and unfortunate conscripts or not, you could still die with a pitchfork or an eel spear through your gut all slow and rotty...ew.

On that positive note, I think I'm done.