If someone had told me three years ago that I would soon be singing the praises of Gardner F. Fox to anyone who might listen, I would've laughed in his face. At that time, I only knew Fox from his comics work for DC and from his sword-and-sorcery tales. I was never that big a fan of DC. While I do have a soft spot for Gar's Niall of the Far Travels stories, I never cared much for his Kothar and Kyrik books.

However, Morgan Holmes had been telling me for years that Fox's historical novels were worthy reads. He especially recommended GFF's The Borgia Blade. So, when I got a chance to pick up an e-book of The Borgia Blade at a good price in late 2017, I said, "What the hell," and pulled the trigger.

Lemme tell ya, eating crow never tasted so good. This was quality stuff. Not only was The Borgia Blade a book that any author of historical adventure should be proud of writing, but it was Fox's first-ever published novel. Let's take a closer look at what I consider a textbook example of how to write a classic swashbuckler.

The Borgia Blade is set in the Rome of 1500 AD, the jubilee year of Pope Alexander VI, formerly known as Roderic Borgia. For the jubilee, all of Catholic Christendom is converging on the Eternal City. Not far from the Vatican, we find Ilarion, an orphaned stable-boy, but who is already a formidable young man. His master is Jacopo Balisandro, an ex-mercenary and a renowned fencing teacher.

In the first chapter, Fox gets right down to business. Ilarion is interrupted during his nightly, solitary fencing drills by the arrival of the beauteous--and tipsy--Contessa Beatrice del Gallina, along with her would-be suitor, Paolo da Rienza. The contessa takes a shine to the strapping, young Ilarion and da Rienza challenges him to a duel. Ilarion defeats Paolo easily--creating a mortal enemy in the process.

Beatrice is impressed and hires Ilarion to perform a very delicate robbery for her. He pulls it off, but not before tangling with--and barely escaping--the guardsmen of the dreaded Cesare Borgia, who function as the city's police force. The contessa is suitably grateful and repays Ilarion with more than the gold she promised...

This is as good a place as any to note that Fox knows how to "bring the sexy". There's a fine line between ramping up the sensuality in an adventure novel and going overboard. Fox does it as well as anybody in the game, then or now.

The next morning, the contessa receives an unexpected visitor: Cesare Borgia. Cesare is the illegitimate son of Pope Alexander and the most feared man in Italy. This is how Gar Fox describes him:

"Cesare Borgia gestured with his long fingers, fingers that could bend an iron horseshoe or stroke a woman's flesh with equal ease."

Extremely intelligent and the employer of a formidable network of spies, Borgia deduced who had to be behind the previous night's theft. Thus, his visit to the contessa. Always on the lookout for men of talent to use in his wars to unite Italy, Cesare offers Ilarion a position as a soldier in his army on the spot. Ilarion accepts.

I have yet to read anywhere that Gardner Fox was an admirer of Rafael Sabatini, but Fox's portrayal of Cesare Borgia compels me to believe that GFF had to be a Sabatini fan. The official historical concensus on Cesare has always been that he was some sort of monster, a Renaissance Caligula. A major dissenter from this view was Rafael Sabatini. Check out his preface to The Life of Cesare Borgia here. Fox's portrayal of Cesare follows that of Sabatini quite closely and is a fairly crucial element in the story.

Back to the novel...Ilarion sets out immediately, heading north to where Borgia's forces are besieging the city of a recalcitrant noble. On the road, he intervenes when bandits attack two travelers at a country inn. After putting several of the runagates to the sword, he learns the two men he just saved are the famed mercenary, Pietro Torrigiani, and none other than Leonardo da Vinci. Both are in the employ of Cesare Borgia and both are heading to the same battle as Ilarion.*

When they reach the siege, this is the scene that Gar Fox paints of the condottieri, the mercenary captains employed by Borgia and other Italian nobles to fight their wars:

"The condotti of mercenary captains like Ercole Bentivoglia and Achille Tiberti swaggered through the camp lanes, carrying swords and maces toward the forges. Crossbowmen and Scottish archers herded in the meadows, their quarrels and shafts screaming at targets all day long. The October sunlight glittered on pikes and halberds, and on gilded pennons hanging limp in the windless air."

That could just as easily be a description of the Free Companies that Conan rode with in Robert E. Howard's yarns. Like REH, Fox knew and loved the Middles Ages/Renaissance.

Ilarion fits in quickly and ends up being invited to a masqued revel being thrown by the mercenary officers and nobles attached to Borgia:

"All around them men and women drank and played, sheltered behind the anonymity of their masks. This was their saturnalia, their carnival. Theirs was a world where pleasure sat enthroned. A woman with her gown torn in front ran across the lawn,—screaming with laughter, not bothering to shield herself. Behind a tree, a voice cried out thickly, passionately."

Good times! Ilarion eventually meets a woman who shall figure in his life for the rest of the novel: Giula da Rienza…

"[Giula da Rienza] stood with a group of court ladies. She wore a crimson brocade gown embroidered in silver webs, hung here and there with rubies. The low slashing of her garment exposed her white shoulders that lifted like the corolla of the lily from her dress. Her rich auburn hair was set with a cap of seed pearls. Beneath the mask, her mouth was generous, tilted at its corners."

That's right: da Rienza. Ilarion has just fallen for the sister of his mortal enemy. However, Cesare Borgia gives him no time to moon over such things. Borgia sends Ilarion and Torrigiani to commit a jailbreak of important prisoners in the enemy city of Fossate. Using some good old-fashioned subterfuge facilitated by heavy drinking, the twain get access to the dungeons of the city. Torrigiani is trying to jimmy the cell-door when halberdiers approach. Ilarion takes on the entire squad to buy his friend time:

"[Ilarion’s] blade lifted and thrust forward, and the officer lunged on without breaking stride. But he was dying as he hit the floor and rolled, with half his throat slashed away. The halberdiers tried to bring their long staffs into position, but Ilarion was no ox to stand and be spitted. He dove into them, hacking at a hand, shouldering a man backward into another. Ilarion soon learned that halberds were not swords to be parried and enfiladed. He took a gash on his upper arm, and a tear across his upper thigh before he ducked under a jab and spitted a man through the leg."

The two accomplish their mission and return to Borgia. Before long, Cesare marches on Fossate, where Ilarion gets his first true taste of war:

"This was war! This was what he had come from Rome to find. Conduct himself well, Il Valentinos [Borgia] had said, and he might become a captain!
The drawbridge was down. Beyond the drawbridge the oaken gate gave way, and now the galloping horsemen could see the streets of Fossate, and watch the men-at-arms frantically running to form a fence of flesh and steel against them.
Now the lancers were driving across the fallen drawbridge, the heavy hoofs of their barded war horses drumming a rolling tattoo of thunder from its wooden planks. Their slim, metal-shod spears came through the open gate and men were going down, with lances sticking through their ribs, and screaming. Here and there, a few men-at-arms hurled themselves upward with swords naked in the sunlight, but the huge espadons and maces that the lancers wielded for close-in work stretched them quivering and bloody on the ground."

I won’t give away any more of the novel. I’ve only revealed as much as I have in order to give potential readers a good idea of what they’re getting. Rest assured that Fox delivers even more bloody mayhem and violent passions right up to the cataclysmic ending.

As I stated above, I consider The Borgia Blade to be a classic swashbuckling adventure novel, a near-perfect combination of Sabatini and REH. For those who have speculated as to what Howard might’ve written if he’d survived into the 1950s, The Borgia Blade is as good an example as anything I can think of. As Howard Andrew Jones has pointed out elsewhere, Fox had this era of history down pat—which includes knowing the swordplay and the details of warfare during that transitional period. The scene where Ilarion battles the halberdiers illustrates that. However, none of it means a thing without a good story and a relentless pace. Gar Fox delivers that in spades.

If you’ve read this far into the review, you are probably thinking about getting your own copy. The Gardner F. Fox Library website offers The Borgia Blade and scores of other exciting novels from GFF for sale as e-books and hardcopies. Check ‘em out here.

*Yes, da Vinci did serve under Cesare Borgia for a couple of years. A fairly good summary can be found here.