François Villon is a fascinating writer, even as Arthur Rimbaud and not just because we lost track of him after his release from prison and his banishment from Paris, to 31 years. Without doubt it is banal death in a brawl in a tavern but any mystery allows the novelist to imagine a different fate for the poet. The first pages of The brotherhood of hunters books are promising. At least until his arrival in Jerusalem. And then, all is diluted in a tangle of intrigue in which Villon, handled, is no longer a liability. Where did the cheeky hero, quarrelsome and rebellious? Swallowed by the vicissitudes of increasingly opaque of a narrative that literally suffocates under the weight of scholarship. Louis XI, Lorenzo the Magnificent and even Jesus, among others, are invited in this novel that immerses us in the Holy Land in the middle of plots which we got tired, clear fault. As for style, halfway between Eco and Zafon, he disappoints by its lack of fluidity. The novel picaresque adventures we hoped not to go.
