Product Description

Harlequins are lost souls, so loved by the devil that he would not take them to hell, but left them to roam the earth. In French the word is hellequin - the name given to the English archers who crossed the Channel to lay a country to waste.

Thomas of Hookton is one of those archers. When his village is sacked by French raiders, he makes a promise to God: to retrieve the relic stolen from Hookton's church. Escaping his father's ambitions, he becomes a wild youth who delights in the life of an army on the warpath.

Driven by his conscience and protected by his fearsome skills, he enters a world where lovers become enemies and enemies become friends, where his only certainty is that somewhere, beyond a horizon smeared with the smoke of fires set by the rampaging English army, a terrible enemy awaits him. This enemy would harness the power of Chistendom's greatest relic: the Grail itself.

Here, in the first book of a new series, the quest begins. It leads him through the fields of France, to the village of Crecy where two great armies meet on the hillside to do battle.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9062 in Books
• Published on: 2000-06-05
• Binding: Paperback
• 592 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
From the earliest times, human beings have looked at the sun and the moon, and at life and death, and have imagined gods who control such things, and looked for ways to control those gods. In Stonehenge, Bernard Cornwell, famous for his novels about Rifleman Sharpe's adventures in the Napoleonic wars and for a sequence of brutally realistic Arthurian novels, considers the men and women who built Stonehenge and Avebury. These stone circles are impressive enough today; but all the more so if you imagine shifting stones from Wales to Salisbury Plain by raft and roller, dressing them with burning fat and grindstones, hauling the lintel stones up tiers of platforms.

"The oxen were goaded again, and, finger's breadth by finger's breadth, the huge stone eased forward until half of it was poised and then the oxen tugged once more and Saban was shouting at the beasts' drivers to halt the animals because the stone was tipping at last. For a heartbeat, it seemed to balance on the ramp's edge, then its leading half crashed down onto the timbers, then the great boulder slid down the ramp to lodge against the hole's face."

It is the story of Saban, made architect against his will; of his brothers Lengar, the aspiring conqueror and Camaban, the cripple-turned-magician. It is the story of Derrewynn, princess-turned-witch, and Aurenna, sacrifice-turned-priestess queen. Stonehenge is an epic tale of people as smart as us, inventing religion and mythology and forcing their wills on the world and each other. --Roz Kaveney

Evening Standard
"A really excellent Historical novel"

The Economist
"A rich mix of bloody conflict amid political and religious turmoil- what a very fine writer Mr Cornwell has become"

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Customer Reviews

A Different Point of View
OK... so why is someone from Montana writing a review on this book? BECAUSE I LIKED IT! I became a Bernard Cornwell fan listening to (I like audiobooks) the aribdged versions of the Grail Series ... {Archer's Tale, Vagabond, Heretic} ... I then listened to Winter King, Enemy of God, & Excalibur ... and Gallows Thief, and The Last Kindom .... ok this is one of my favorite authors now however I think his best series is the Grail Series .....
That said, I also looked forward to the publication Stonehenge ..... and as I'm an audiobook fiend I listened to Tom Sellwood's reading .... (as a personal matter I think Cornwell should get himself a better reader ... as this one didn't do the book justice I didn't think)
From the viewpoint of a native of Montana who has never been to Stonehenge (and probably never will be) ... This was a great story about how the historical place of Stonehenge came into existence ..... VERY WELL TOLD ... demonstrating again why this writer has become one of my favorites ....
While I do not agree with the critics who said this was a big let down after Excalibur ..... I do agree with those who say that it takes awhile to get into this story and that it became drawn out at certain points .... I think because of Cornwell's dedication to good research and not wanting to waste any of it by not including it in some way ... leading to extended descriptive sections as the method of insertion into the story ... (not a sin ... ) ... Despite these minor problems this is a GREAT STORY .... I was not disappointed!!!!!!!!!!

While I am not a Sharpe series fan, nor a fan of Cornwell's US history stories generally (except for Gallows Thief) ..... I am a great fan of his more ancient history stories about England and Europe ... these are GREAT STORIES.... with rich and engaging characters ... and with well researched and truly ingeneous and unique story telling ability ...Stonehenge is not an exception, but another GREAT example of this writer's ability ... well that's my opinion anyway.

Interesting and clever in places
I'm a big fan of Bernard Cornwell so bought this book as soon as it was released. I found it to be his worst book, but don't let that make you think it's poor, because it ain't. Set in Neolithic times, the book tells the story of brothers, sons of the tribal king, battling it out for supremacy over the tribe. One, slightly mad, is driven away from the village and wonders the country looking for his religious message. He finds it in Wales and thus begins the building of Stonehenge.
The time frame is too short for considered actual events, merely a few years, but it is an interesting idea and who knows; it might be somewhere near the truth!?
I haven't re read it unlike other Cornwell novels but is a cherished part of my collection of his books.
If you are new to Cornwell, try one of the Sharpe stories or better still his Arthurian trilogy first, they'll grip you far more.

A Neolithic swashbuckler!
The only thing harder to research than a historical novel is a pre-historical one. Cornwell has made a serious effort to understand the how the Neolithic looked in southern Britain, then fit plot and characters into that landscape. It's an exciting story, full of duplicity, heroics, deeply held feelings and almost convincing people.

Centred, as the title suggests, on the great stone monument on Salisbury Plain, he builds a narrative suggesting the motivation and labour involved in building this ancient site. He uses two trinities to develop his story. One trinity is comprised of brothers who represent material, mysticism and morality. The other is three who, by stretching your imagination, might be Mother, Maiden and Crone of the slassical witchcraft Sisterhood, although those identities shift drastically as the story progresses. The clash of greedy warlords with messianic figures is like something out of Sir Walter Scott. Cornwell's technique makes thrilling reading while upholding modern standards of justice and rewards for the good. The good, of course, don't come through unblemished or painlessly, but they survive. All the excitement and maneuvering raise this book a step above the modern fantasy novel, but the step is a small one.

If you're looking for adventure with an unusual twist, this is the book for you. You will be taken back in time, through some spatial adjustment, but most importantly, view a society very different from the one you know. Prepare yourself for a harsh existence while remembering that "progress" is a word with many definitions. Perhaps there's some benefit in reading the "Historical note" at the back first, then delving into Cornwell's sources, before returning to this fictional account. All of his resources are at least as readable as this book, and infinitely more informative, if not as imaginative. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]