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 The Nameless Day by Sara Douglass
Voyager, trade paperback, UKŁ11.99, 584pp
reviewed by Underview
Original appearance: Albedo one issue 23, August 2001
Sara Douglass could stand accused of crimes against wordiness in The Nameless Day, but in her defence I offer as exhibit one the fact that her series The Crucible is only starting out. And Book One of a series is always a good place to start. And the back cover indicated that this was a kind of alternative historical novel. And I love alternate histories, so I read the damn thing.
Now Sara Douglass has been getting some fine press of late, despite the overabundance of esses in her surname, and if The Nameless Day is anything to judge by, she deserves every word of praise she has so far harvested. Set at the time of the Hundred Years War, the novel takes as its premise the fact that the sheer mayhem that cut through this century had a unifying cause. At the start of the book she tells about one Wynkyn de Worde (a relative of Pullyn de Plonker I felt initially) who was entrusted by the Church, in the person of the pope himself, to round up the demons who roam the Earth and once a year consign them back to the pits of hell. But de Worde is caught by the Black Death and before he can pass on his duties to a successor, he dies. So the demons run free for thirty years or so with things in Europe consequently going to pot. Until the Archangel Michael in person nominates a replacement, an English priest called Thomas Neville. But Neville is at a disadvantage as no-one is available to tell him what his mission entails or how he might achieve it. He does find out that de Worde had a book which would reveal all. But he does not know where the book is. Nobody does. And those who could help are not well disposed towards Thomas.
This novel is super fun, well plotted and beautifully realised. Thomas is a genuinely rounded character, with doubts about his religion, tragedy in his past and undoubtedly in his future, friends in high places but enemies in even higher. Sara Douglass manages to give him feet of clay and still keep you in his corner. For a large proportion of the novel he is not really a very likeable character, but she keeps you interested in his fate and the fates of those surrounding him. I truly hope that Harper Collins see fit to send me volumes 2 and 3, and more if they are planned, of this excellent series. Otherwise I might have to buy them - perish the thought.
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