posted on 24 Sep 2017

Free Lance and the Field of Blood by Paul Stewart illustrated by Chris Riddell

You may well be familiar with the reliable creative partnership between Paul Stewart and former children’s laureate, Chris Riddell –especially if you’re a reader of their epic fantasy series The Edge Chronicles. Here though the pair take us into the world of knights and jousting tournaments but with the characteristic tongue-in-cheek approach that we’ve come to expect.

This is in fact part two of a three part trilogy about Free Lance but the good news is that you don’t have to have read the first to enjoy this one. Free Lance is a knight who isn’t bonded to any specific master and wonders from jousting tournament to jousting tournament trying to make a living. He arrives at the event in the Western Marches only to discover his reputation goes before him and he’s already being tapped up by the local fixer to throw the tournament.

Of course, it turns out that there’s another story going here – a story of infatuation, trickery and double-dealing and Free Lance finds himself unwittingly right at the heart of it. We get some glorious little pen portraits of the knights and stewards who have gathered together but fussy administrator and the lumptious thugs and villains are the ones that will stick in your mind. There are, of course, two beautiful women who conform to the requisite fairy tale stereotypes – the princess with a mass of glossy red curls who is going to be married off to the dreadful Hengist and the equally lovely but raven-haired and treacherous hand-maid who is scheming for her own ends.

I’m not going to tell you the story because you’ll want to find that out for yourself but what makes this story such a pleasure to read is that Free Lance, although a medieval knight, really has a modern day sensibility – he knows what’s going on, he’s self-confident but deprecating and he treats everything going on around him in an essentially sardonic way. In the end however Free Lance’s real interests are in his horse, Jed, and his newly acquired young page, Wormrick.

And so at the end we move on to anticipate part three of the trilogy and who could resist this:

“You are a squire to a free lance now, Wormrick,” I said. “ I can’t promise you riches, or soft beds, or a warm fire to sit beside – but there’s one thing I can give you in plenty.”

“What’s that?” Wormrick asked, his voice deep and steady.

“Adventure,” I said.

All this and I’ve said nothing about Chris Riddell’s superb illustrations. We’ve become complacent about Riddells drawings because they’re always so spot on and there seems to be an almost effortless stream of them constantly bubbling from his pen. They do, however, always add something special to the book and they make the characters live for the reader. Other people have done more justice to his drawing than I can muster – just take it form me that his work is always top notch.

Expect the next instalment in February 2018.

Terry Potter

September 2017