Swashbuckling action

William Napier: Clash of Empires, Orion Books, 2011, 398 pp.

There’s something wickedly exciting about reading a book that’s set somewhere familiar to you. The lines between truth and fiction begin to blur, and you immediately immerse yourself in the author’s universe. It’s one thing to read of an unknown city: quite another for a story to unfold in a landscape you are intimately familiar with.

It was with this curious fascination that I approached William Napier’s latest novel, the Malta-based Clash of Empires: The Great Siege. The book joins the slowly growing set of Great Siege literature, taking its place alongside The Sword and Scimitar, The Religion and Blood Rock among others.

The book begins with a brief prologue in Rhodes in 1522. The Knights of St John have been defeated by the Ottoman Empire. Humbled, homeless, humiliated, they set sail for Sicily, their future as an Order uncertain.

And so to 1564. The Ottomans prepare to attack Malta, now the Knights’ home and buttress of Christendom. Sixteen-year old Nicholas Ingoldsby, son of a former knight and now destitute and homeless in the English midlands, vows to honour his father’s memory by making his way to Malta and fighting alongside the Order. As they sail to Malta, he is transformed from a weedy boy, “thin as a pikestaff”, to a juggernaut who kills five corsairs in mere minutes.

Once our young hero reaches Malta, the novel begins in earnest. Napier does a good job of re-telling the Great Siege, with young Nicholas ever-present throughout its key moments.

The heroes, other than Nicholas, are invariably knights. Napier occasionally goes out of his way to praise the resilience of the Maltese – “They are made of the same rock as their island”, Nicholas thinks (presumably unaware that limestone is rather soft, as far as rocks go) – but any local heroes, save Luqa Briffa, remain nameless.

Instead, we get Franco Briffa, whose joviality and coarse humour tick the ‘ignorant-but-kind-native’ box, and his virgin daughter Maddalena, who with her eyes “like Malta honey” serves as Nicholas’ love interest.

Clash of Empires is not, as you may have surmised, a character-driven novel. Characters are introduced, assigned a few adjectives and perhaps a descriptive paragraph, and then thrown into the melee. The Ottoman forces die in their thousands without ever uttering a word. Stereotypes abound: the promiscuous Italian knight, the devil-may-care Mexicans and stiff upper-lip English all make an appearance.

We learn little of Hodge, Nicholas’ sidekick, other than his occasional grunts about Shropshire. Nicholas and Maddalena seemingly fall in love by osmosis: a few glances and a hasty kiss is all it takes for Maddalena to begin singing some guff about her “one true love”.

One would be forgiven a twinge of jealousy towards Nicholas. Master swordsman, favourite of Grandmaster La Valette, hero Ingliż of the local Maltese and, to top it off, Anglo-Saxon dreamboat. Not bad for a pasty teenager.

What the novel lacks in terms of character development, however, it more than makes up in swashbuckling action. Napier is something of a battle junkie, with muskets loaded and fired at every turn. The action scenes are lovingly written, with pages of descriptive text dedicated to the barrage of St Elmo, Senglea and Birgu.

Altogether, Clash of Empires is a decent enough read. There is little of the nuance or balance of The Sword and the Scimitar, for instance, but not much of the latter’s prolixity, either. It follows a clear black-versus-white plotline, with gentlemen knights and stoical peasants on one side, and dastardly, blood-thirsty Muslims on the other. At times, Napier’s determination to portray the knights as valient is misplaced.

“It takes courage to die. But it takes still greater courage to send other men to their death,” he writes at one juncture of La Valette. Such fatuousness requires no further comment.

Yet despite its evident failings, Clash of Empires plods along at a decent enough pace. Towards the end of the book, La Valette is moved to acknowledge the bravery of the Maltese.

“This peasantry that we rule over here,” he proclaims, “sullen, uncommunicative, dirty, dishonest, superstitious, forever quarrelling and fornicating among themselves as they are – I am beginning to think they are not all bad.” Thank you, Mr Napier. One could say the same about your book.

Competition

Tell us which local event you’d like to turn into historical fiction and explain why in no more than 100 words. The winner will receive a copy of William Napier’s Clash of Empires. The most original entry will be chosen by The Sunday Times. Send your entries, marked Clash of Empires competition, to The Sunday Times, Strickland House, 341 St Paul Street, VLT 1211 by September 15 .