The Hawk That Dare Not Hunt by Day

“I’ll read the Bible that Master Tyndale translates,” I said.
“And ponder it.”
“And ponder it,” I agreed.”
“Praise the Lord,” said Uncle Jack.
But there was a hollow sound to his words. I had heard if oft before. It came when he said, in his deepest voice, “Praise the Lord.” He was not, I was certain, as interested in my pondering the Bible as he was in the tidy profit the books would bring.

The Hawk That Dare Not Hunt By Day

The Hawk That Dare Not Hunt by Day by Scott O’Dell is a historical fiction based on the life of William Tyndale. While I was surprised at the quality of some aspects, others were mediocre at best.

Side note: Over the next week or few I’ll be working on changing my website host. You can keep coming to the same place and read the same reviews, but it may look a little different soon.

Plot

Tom Barton and his Uncle Jack are smugglers in 15th-century Europe. They live with one eye over their shoulders, always watching out for the king’s searchers. They make dangerous runs back and forth across the English Channel, despite troubled seas, pirates, and myriad other perils.

On one of these voyages, Tom meets William Tyndale, who is pouring his life into translating and printing the English Bible. Uncle Jack and Tom make a pact with Tyndale to distribute his Bibles. In the words of the back cover, “While Uncle Jack sees only the profit in a religious Reformation, it is Tom who sees in Tyndale’s work the dawning of a new age and a new way of life for himself and England.”

The plot of this book is quite slow-moving at many times. While I never found myself bored, exactly, it wasn’t attention-grabbing either. Many times month-long voyages are summed up in one or two sentences. This takes down the length of the book, but it left me feeling disconnected from the characters.

Really, the plot is not the major aspect of this book. The driving force is the characters and their interactions.

Characters

16-year-old Tom Barton works and lives aboard his uncle’s ship, the Black Pearl. He’s a sailor through and through, and relishes the adventures he sees on the ship.

I don’t really know much about Tom, since the style of the book (which I’ll get to later) doesn’t communicate much emotion. Only once did I feel anything he was feeling, and even that scene glossed over his emotions.

Uncle Jack is my favorite character from the story. He reminds me of Podo Helmer from The Wingfeather Saga. His distinct personality and manner of speech make him memorable.

Most of the characters—indeed, all except four—are real people from history. It is admirable how O’Dell brings them all together in a coherent story.

Theme & Content Warnings

There really wasn’t much of an overarching theme for this book, which surprised me, coming from Bob Jones University Press. The point seems to be more a study of the Reformation era and the life of William Tyndale. It doesn’t do either of those exceptionally well, but I’ll get to that in the next section.

At the end there is a two-chapter long character arc where Tom has to forgive someone, but it doesn’t mean much because you don’t even know how Tom feels toward this man.

Overall

One big plus for this book is the map. As I’ve mentioned before, maps always make books better, no matter what they are.

O’Dell writes The Hawk That Dare Not Hunt by Day in a way that reads like Shakespeare. His archaic vocabulary is impressive, and, while I can’t verify any of it, he appears to have done extensive research on the time period.

This would have made for an immersive book if the author didn’t skimp on the description. With a book focusing on two seafaring traders, there was a chance to include exotic descriptions and capture the feel of the time, but this was not included.

When there are descriptions of the surroundings, they’re brilliant. The author is truly talented. But there are precious few of these.

In regard to the educational aspect I mentioned earlier, again, O’Dell shows little of the surroundings. It focuses in on Tom Barton’s thoughts and doesn’t venture into the rest of the world. This might be a book better suited for those already familiar with the life of William Tyndale, since he isn’t even around for a good portion of it.

To the book’s credit, the lack of description and emotion lends to the feel that it was written in the same time it takes place.

So, my overall rating is this: if you want a clean historical fiction, you should read this. There are better places to learn about William Tyndale, like Outsiders by Paul Chappell. But this may be a fun book for those who know about the time period already.

Below is the first chapter read aloud, for those who want to know more about the book.

And as always, thanks for reading, and I’ll write you in the next one!