The Greatcoats, by Sébastien de Castell

I'd never heard of this series before reading it, and I don't understand why.

I loved it, from A to Z. In four volumes, I wasn't bored for a second. I laughed, I almost had nightmares, I fell a little in love, and I found a little of the excitement I had when I saw the third The Lord of the Rings at the movies (I yelles "Catapult!" and threw snowballs everywhere. I was 11).

Bonus: the author is Canadian, and was born in Quebec. So despite the fact that only the first volume has been translated into French (again, beyond me), we can say that we're reading a little Quebecois.

Summary

The Greatcoats are magistrates who travel from village to village to conduct trials and, when necessary, duels to enforce the law. Falcio val Mond is the leader of the Greatcoats, and a great friend of the king who has put this organization back on the map.

Things aren't going too well. The king has been killed, the Cloaks of Glory have fallen into disuse, and Falcio and his two friends are considered traitors. The country is swimming in corruption and misery, and they have only their swords and their foolish courage to face it.

Impressions

I just saw The Count of Monte Cristo at the cinema (it was a good film, I recommend it), and I immediately drew a parallel with The Greatcoats. Like Edmond Dantès, who spends years digging in the rock and manages to escape from the Château d'If by taking the place of a corpse, Falcio isn't just a good-hearted man with a sword, he's a superman, a true hero. For example, for what seemed to me an impossibly long time, Falcio is pursued by people who want to murder him, and he has no time to eat or sleep. He energizes himself with a kind of drug that has the potential to kill him every time he consumes it, and has to fight again and again. He's not supposed to survive, but that's Falcio. I just wanted to take him in my arms and put him to bed.

If you like action scenes, this is the novel for you. I've never seen sword fights, or fights at all, so well described. There's enough detail to satisfy those who know a thing or two about fencing (I don't), but enough pace for those who know nothing about it to follow it all with passion.

If you want a laugh, you'll get one too. There's a lot of humor in the book, and what's impressive is that it works. It's funny for real. By the very end, I could feel it starting to run out of steam, but despite this slight drop in quality, I was smiling. But be prepared: the cruelty in this world reaches a level I've rarely seen before. There are terrible scenes that continue to haunt me to this day. A surprisingly successful cohabitation.

And then there's Falcio. Ah, Falcio. I told you, I've fallen a little in love with him. Everything conspires to discourage him and make him abandon his ideals, and he's not always enthusiastic or optimistic, far from it. But there's something about him that makes him incapable of giving up. He keeps his sense of humor, he keeps his moral compass, and he fights for what's right in the world.

I think it's a beautiful metaphor for our current situation: there's plenty that's going wrong, and it would be easy to focus on that and despair. But there's also good, wonderful even, and that's worth fighting for. This is no time to give up.

It's almost Christmas. I'm just saying.