#612: Between Two Fires

A plague of angels and demons in medieval horror

june gloom
6 min readSep 22, 2024

Initial release: October 2, 2012
Author: Christopher Buehlman

If you pressed me I’d say I’m not a big fan of fantasy, and I’m not. But every so often I get the bug to get into some good old fantasy stuff, you know, elves and orcs and magic and all that. I’m a fan of the Dark Souls series, and I’m always looking for stuff that captures the bleak mood of those games. My search for books in that vein — something I’m always a little hesitant about, as genre literature is often a platform for the author’s conservative sexual hangups, retrograde views on women and barely disguised fetishes — ultimately led me to a particular book that not only seemed interesting, but which I could easily slip into my ever-growing List… you know, the one this blog is almost exclusively about, with the esoteric criteria that sounds silly if I explain it out loud. Enter Christopher Buehlman’s Between Two Fires.

Triumph of Death (c. 1562) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

What I expected when I bought this book was something along the lines of Dark Souls. What I got was more like The Last of Us meets The Seventh Seal; I like both of those, so hey, I wasn’t too disappointed. It’s not as existentialist as Ingmar Bergman’s classic flick, and it definitely feels bleaker than the hit zombie franchise, but it hammers on themes of faith and hope amidst a world of death and corruption.

We open in the year 1348; the plague has been ravaging France for months now, grinding the Hundred Years’ War to a halt (at least for a while) and depriving the dwindling populace of food, as there was no one to grow it, or harvest it, or bake it. A group of brigands take shelter from a storm in a barn; there, they meet a young girl named Delphine whose wealthy, educated parents have died of the pestilence. One thing leads to another and the biggest brigand, Thomas, a haunted war veteran and disgraced former knight, slaughters two of his fellows and ties the third one to a tree to protect the child; after some squabbling, he agrees to take her first to Paris, then to Avignon.

It becomes clear early on that Delphine isn’t all that she seems; at times it’s as if she’s being counseled, or sometimes even controlled, by angels, and Thomas, in spite of his misgivings, feels strangely compelled to protect her at all costs. When he contracts the plague after fighting some mysterious river monster — an early hint that the time of the Black Death has something of a supernatural character in this book — it’s Delphine who figures out a way to save him. Joined by a barely-closeted, alcoholic priest by the name of Matthieu, the group works their way through a somewhat episodic narrative that takes them to Paris and ultimately to Avignon. Along the way they encounter demonic Norman courts, angry statues, giant demon jellyfish, and worse — by the time they leave Paris, the river pirates they briefly hitch a ride with hardly even rate. The world of Between Two Fires is a nightmare world of demons at war with angels for the souls of humanity, which trundles along at the feet of these beings ignorant of the spiritual warfare happening all around while God is out to lunch.

While Delphine is the driving force behind the plot, the narrative really centers around Thomas and his long road to redemption, gradually unveiling his origins as a proud knight who was excommunicated from the church and had his lands stolen from him in the aftermath of the disastrous Battle of Crécy, devolving to theft and murder to stay alive. We also get insight into Matthieu, his unhappy childhood and his unhappy life as a priest in some rinky-dink little town, unable to find answers for the plague for a townspeople that loathes him. It doesn’t take much to convince him to follow Thomas and Delphine.

As you might have guessed from my namedropping, don’t go into this book with any real preconceptions. Between Two Fires is a hard novel to pin down, genre-wise: obviously the things that Thomas and friends face are horrifying; obviously the historical snapshot that Buehlman gives us was meticulously researched (such as making sure a bridge the characters cross actually existed at the time); obviously the bigger theme of a war between heaven and hell borders on fantasy. But “historical horror fantasy” as a term doesn’t quite capture all that this book is, or what it’s about. I suppose if I had to describe it as anything I’d call it profoundly Catholic in that spicy sort of way — that being, it explores the more mythical and fantastical elements of Christianity, an aspect that I suspect modern churches prefer not to think too hard about, especially in the United States.

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t Christian literature; I’ve seen detractors call it an edgy take on This Present Darkness and while there’s certainly a kernel of truth to that, not every Christian will find the abundance of profanity (the F word appears rarely, which is logical given its relative newness, but in its place is the very common “whoring” with the same meaning,) the nightmarish demons whose descriptions evoke Berserk, the smattering of raw (and usually vaguely unpleasant) sexuality, or the theological implications of the book’s events to their taste. Nevertheless, none of that is the real point of the book — it’s a book about faith and hope and redemption in the face of unimaginable evil and profound suffering. There’s a scene in the book’s finale where angels and devils war in the skies over Avignon, and a demon is gripped by two angels and driven into the river; three angels emerge, proving that redemption is possible for even the furthest fallen. It’s a minor moment, but it embodies the most important theme in the book, which I think just about anybody who tries to follow the teachings of Christ can get behind.

Not everyone will like this book; leaving aside the episodic narrative structure and the darker, seedier parts of it (though I appreciate the minimal presence of wieners and rape compared to, well, most genre literature out there) some may be put off by the dialogue, which I’ve seen categorized as “anachronistic” but to be perfectly honest I don’t really know how you’re supposed to write English dialogue for characters speaking 14th century French and still have it be readable by a 21st century audience. Buehlman moonlights at Renaissance festivals as Christophe the Insultor, and it shows in the quick, incisive banter between the characters, which is rarely too much but helps build connections between the main trio. But if you’re looking for something more akin to a medieval manuscript I don’t know what to tell you.

I wouldn’t say that Between Two Fires isn’t the kind of book I would normally read; it’s perhaps more fair to say that Between Two Fires is a pleasant subversion of my expectations with this type of genre fiction. You may find yourself with Google by your side to look up certain words or concepts, as Buehlman did his homework to capture this specific moment in medieval history, its culture, its warfare, but somehow he manages to tie it all together into something solid, something meaningful.

Or, to put it another way, it’s one hell of a book.

-june❤

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june gloom
june gloom

Written by june gloom

Media critic, retired streamer, furry. I love you. [she/her]