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How long does it take to read Heretic?

The Grail Quest

Bernard Cornwell, Sean Barrett

Heretic by Bernard Cornwell, Sean Barrett takes about 7 hours 20 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.

Book 3 of The Grail Quest

Previous: Vagabond Next: 1356

About 7 hours 20 minutes

A weekend read

First published 1975. 400 pages, about 110,000 words.

15 days at 30 minutes a day

Estimate based on 275 words per page.

At other speeds

Slow, 150 words a minute 12 hours 13 minutes
Average, 250 words a minute 7 hours 20 minutes
Fast, 400 words a minute 4 hours 35 minutes

The page count is the median across 30 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.

About the book

The eagerly anticipated follow-up to the number one bestseller Vagabond, this is the third instalment in Bernard Cornwell's Grail Quest series.In 1347 the English capture Calais and the war with France is suspended by a truce.But for Thomas of Hookton, the hero of Harlequin and Vagabond, there is no end to the fighting. He is pursuing the grail, the most sacred of Christendom's relics, and is sent to his ancestral homeland, Gascony, to engineer a confrontation with his deadliest enemy, Guy Vexille.Once in the south country Thomas becomes a raider, leading his archers in savage forays that will draw his enemy to his arrows. But then his fortunes change. Thomas becomes the hunted as his campaign is destroyed by the church. With only one companion, a girl condemned to burn as a heretic, Thomas goes to the valley of Astarac where he believes the grail was once hidden and might still be concealed, and there he plays a deadly game of hide and seek with an overwhelming enemy.Then, just as Thomas succeeds in meeting his enemy face to face, fate intervenes as the deadliest plague in the history of mankind erupts into Europe. What had been a landscape of castles, monasteries, vineyards and villages, becomes death's kingdom and the need for the grail, as a sign of God's favour, is more urgent than ever.

Subjects: Archers, Archers in fiction, British, British in fiction, Christian Heretics, Christian heretics in fiction

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