So why then is this not simply a biographical or "docu-adventure" novel? First perhaps, because Vollman "pens" the novel as William the Blind, a chronicler and philosopher contemporaneous with the events, but able to glimpse and draw from the present. Remember the likes of the prose in E.R. Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros or William Hope Hodgson's The Night Land? Well this is the sort of prose Vollman uses for nigh unto 700 pages -- and, all in all, it works. The introduction is a bit dense and heavy on convoluted and arcane philosophizing, being a sort of mission statement to the rest of the work, but once Vollman gets down to the business of telling the story, the prose gets easier and the story goes on apace. This isn't to say that it's entirely free of the author's musings and comments, but the fascinating picture of the cutthroat politicking -- not to mention the cutthroat massacres on either side of the native-settler front -- truly make the times and its heroes and cads come to life. It's this setting of the genius loci of the era and place through the author's archaic diction and orthography, that like the prose of an Eddison or Tolkien involves one in the story and sets the mood.

This being said, I've read, in the recent past, a number of 17^th and early 18^th English texts for a publishing project I'm involved in, so my saying that Argall is easy to read should be taken with a grain of salt. It's certainly not the sort of book even I could finish in a couple of days -- that's partly that it doesn't read with the ease of an Edgar Rice Burroughs novel, and partly that it is the sort of prose that lends itself to savouring rather than skimming. Could the book have gained with some trimming by a judicious editor? Probably. Is it just the ramblings of an unrestrained or self-absorbed author gone wild? No, or if so, it's done well enough that one can ignore it.

Another element that stands out, regardless of how one views the author's point of view regarding the native-settler interactions, or his writing style, is the clearly meticulous research he has done in bringing the story to life. The book, while it draws significantly on Smith's own accounts, includes a lengthy bibliography of original sources, and later commentary which the author has also mined. This sort of book is the kind of work that makes one want to look up the original accounts of Smith (see sidebar) and his contemporaries and read them for oneself. It is partly because the John Smith portrayed in Argall presents an interesting duality. He is clearly a lone heroic figure as physically hearty and unstoppable as a Conan or Tarzan, but also very much politically incorrect by today's standards in terms of his overly zealous and Machiavellian handling of native relations. He's also interesting in that, while he drags the colony kicking and screaming towards survival, he's unappreciated, even loathed by his peers, with his life one of seemingly endless frustration. The portion of the book dealing with Pocahontas, reads somewhat like a latter day ethnic cleansing, performed on a single individual, with Argall, the colony governor, looking very much like a latter day Milosevich.

Is Argall an easy read either mechanically or emotionally? No. It's the sort of book which, regardless of its arcane orthography or endlessly mythologized subject matter, tells it like it is (or was). If you want to feel good about the founding of the Virginia colony, rent the Disney version... If you want to know who the characters really were, warts and all, then read Argall, and if after you feel up to it, by all means read John Smith's own accounts (see sidebar).