Hellalyle And Hildebrand by Tagai Tarutin [ARC Review]

 *I’d like to thank NetGalley, Silverwood Books and Tagai Tarutin for providing me with a free ARC in exchange for an honest review. 

“Hellalyle and Hildebrand” is Tagai Tarutin’s first full-length published work, and is a re-telling of the danish ballad “Hellalyle and Hildebrand”, a story about the forbidden love between Princess Hellalyle and her bodyguard Hildebrand, Prince of Engelland. The story was popularised in the Victorian era when the ballad was translated by Whitley Stokes and painted by Frederic William Burton in watercolours which is depicted on the book cover.

I was quite excited to read this novel as I am for one a huge fan of retellings of old tales and stories, and secondly, Hellalyle and Hildebrand had been a story that had fascinated me for a while. Especially since the painting by Burton has captivated me since forever. So my expectations were high as I have read a good amount of amazing retellings that provided a new angle on an old story.

However, Tarutin’s novel could not captivate me. Firstly, I don’t think his retelling added anything to these characters and their story. The characters of Hellalyle and Hildebrand were barely explored, neither was their forbidden love story. There was very little emotional built-up to their relationship, which had much to do in the writing style of the author. Tarutin has the tendency to tell rather than show which takes much of the emotional connection that a reader might develop with the story. There is a huge difference between being told that someone is in love than being shown through action and dialogue. This novel lacked the latter.

I did enjoy how the author gave the other knights some showtime during the story, telling some of their unique stories. However, even here there was a focus only on a chosen few side characters, but never connecting them to the main story in a meaningful way. 

Hellalye was barely developed outside her beauty and kind hearted nature. I’d love to see a personality like her show in a different nuance. Why would a well raised, graceful Hellalye fall for a brutish knight? I wished to have seen more than a male gaze version of who she might have been. I wanted a female character with personality, an inner struggle, and constraints of the time she lived in. When she entered the star crossed relationship with Hildebrand she must have known that there was no happy ending for the both, so why did she give in? Why did she sleep with him? What emotional turmoil was she in when she knew that their love had caused his death? Did she feel responsible? Unfortunately, Tarutin did not explore this at all. Nor did he with Hildebrand. For a knight who was revealed his fate to him as a teenager who was still willing to follow his destiny, there was a huge lack of emotional depth and character development. He was a good man with such a holy calling. How did he stumble, how did he fail? What did that do to him? Again nothing.

One can use a more fairytale type storytelling and still manage to create emotional depth and interesting characters. But again Tarutin did fail to find the balance of these. His writing was too fixated to crafted description of environment and setting, but got lost when it came to his characters. Also, his writing was slightly out of harmony, changing his style from a very matter of fact telling to an attempt of oldish storytelling. Not to mention the grammatical errors when the characters used the German language. 

Another thing that struck me as odd was the mixture of religious and spiritual beliefs. The story begins with a divine revelation to Hildebrand about his future by a Christian nun on her deathbed. The Holy Ghost is marking him as an important figure. But then Greek mythology, Roman mythology and other pagan beliefs get added to the already religious charged story. The story is constantly walking on a line between a fantastical tale or an historical retelling. I fear it did not convey to me as a reader.

Overall, an idea and concept with great potential that failed in his execution. Retellings are such a great way to explore old tales and stories through a new or even modern lens, exploring characters who were historically seen only one way. Unfortunately, Tarutin did not offer us anything new or life changing. Instead, his story keeps the male gaze of historical figures alive, and seems stuck in his desire to appear literary talented but failing to write compelling characters.