As Ricardians, we’re not all that impressed with the work of Dan Jones and have long considered him to be an accomplished writer of fiction. Well, now he really is a writer of fiction, and the book described below, “Essex Dogs”, looks an exciting and excellent tale of a group of archers and others in the 1346 army of King Edward III and Edward of Woodstock, the Black Prince. The army invades France at the commencement of the Hundred Years War, and the group of men, the eponymous Essex Dogs, are part of it.
As rule I wouldn’t want to read Dan Jones, because I really don’t trust his grasp on people/events around the Wars of the Roses and just after, but as this book describes itself as fiction from the outset, I’m ready to give it go. It promises to be a rattling good read. Mind you, I have to qualify this by admitting to never having read Mr Jones’s work (my adverse opinion has been based on reviews that give the flavour of his opinions), so I have no idea what his actual writing is like.
You can read all about this novel here.
murreyandblue 
Viscountessw, we got a promo copy at the store about week or so earlier and I grabbed it (curiosity will be the death of me), it’s on my table ‘to get to’ but from what I have read leafing through so far Jones has added enough ‘authentic’ (ie. stereotypical coarse, obscene) dialogue expected from archers to intrigue me. Hopefully he has more to flesh out these men, the HYW did recruit from all strata of society, but until at least the 1370’s everything went the way of the English armies, the brutal realities of slaughter on a massive scale was something the French experienced, not these piecemeal units – ie. “Essex dogs” (even Knolles’ freebooting companies were a tight force, he ran his plundering raids like a business!)
It will be interesting to see if he can pull off a Bernard Cornwell narrative here.
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