The Hedge Knight

The Hedge Knight is a graphic novel, based on the original story written by George R.R. Martin which is included in book 2 of the collection Dreamsongs – A RRetrospective. It is a prequel to the A Song of Ice and Fire series, set a century before the events of the series. It takes place in a medieval land of knights and lords called the Seven Kingdoms, although only a small part of the land is explored in The Hedge Knight. It follows the story of “Dunk”, who, after the death of his former master, fashions himself as Ser Duncan the Tall and decides to enter a tournament in order to gain a reputation for himself and win enough money to carry on as a hedge knight in the years to come. However, after he attacks a prince to protect a lady, his plans are cut short.

The first thing you notice when you start reading a graphic novel is the art, and in this case you can’t fault it. Each image is well detailed, and you can see what’s going on clearly from the images, unlike some graphic novels and comics in which it can be hard to make out exactly what’s happening in some of the frames. The choice of colours fit in with the mood of the events taking place, the opening pages showing the death of Ser Arlan (the knight that Dunk originally served as a squire) are dark and miserable, later when Dunk reaches Ashford, where the tournament is taking place, the colours are bright with all the heraldry of the knights gathered there, relaxing and going about their business. Later, during the fighting, the wounds inflicted are not depicted as violently as the accompanying text describes them, but it gets the point across and I believe that they serve better than highly graphic injuries, you read these things for pleasure, not to be repulsed by gruesome wounds.

The story is strong, and is in-keeping with the style laid out in the Song. Dunk is a well written main character, who tends to be rather optimistic about his abilities whilst at the same time being quite humble towards those he sees as above him, and arrogant, in a good natured way, towards those beneath him. As he is a hedge knight, a knight who has not sworn to serve any master or lord except for justice and the realm, his level in society is fairly low when compared with that of the other contenders in the tournament. As he says several times in the story as well, he is not particularly bright, and he has a tendency to naïveté and often hot-headedness. As the story progresses he loses some of his naïveté as he learns more about the society he is living in, and comes up against several class barriers that he must deal with. The story is believable for the setting, as are the characters’ personalities and actions. There are elements of humour in the story which keep it interesting, and a few plot turns which can be rather unexpected, which is something that Martin does well. As with the Song, Martin isn’t afraid to injure people in the course of a story, which means that you don’t get jaded because the main characters appear to have plot immunity to anything potentially fatal, a failing of many stories, although depending on the story this can have a varying impact.

The story is very faithful to the original. I haven’t read the original all the way through as yet, but I have looked at it and most of the text in the graphic novel appears to be lifted almost straight from the original novella, with adaptations to better fit the format. Being a fan of stories staying the same when being transferred between media, this is a big plus in my opinion. I feel that the graphic novel format is complementary to the existing story; it allows the reader to get a better feel of the imagery that the characters are seeing. Also, it opens the story up to a wider group of readers – I have a friend who is not particularly fond of reading long novels, but as this is in the graphic novel format devoured it and loved it.

If you like medieval fantasy, battles over honour and class, graphic novels, or Martin’s other work; I highly recommend this book, even if you don’t normally enjoy reading. If you compare it to the Song the only thing it lacks is the huge sense of scale, but that series has had 4 books in which to build that up, whereas this is only a short story, and so I don’t think you can fault it for that. And if you want more, there is also a follow up, The Sworn Sword.