The Winter King – Bernard Cornwell
The Winter King  is the first volume in Bernard Cornwell’s Warlord trilogy. It’s a retelling of the Arthur legends, but from a more historical perspective. Gone are the glittering castles, Knights in full armour, and magic wielding druids. They’ve been replaced by warrior tribes, mud, mental nature worshippers, mud, blood, mud, murder, mud, and turnips. And mud.
The Winter King is kinda tough going during the first half, as it’s largely focussed on painting an image of a fairly barbaric feudal England (or, at least, the bottom half of England, below Northumbria). It’s so tough, in fact, that for the first four hundred or so pages, it reads like a scholarly history textbook.
Then Merlin, Galahad and Lancelot arrive and we’re suddenly reminded that Cornwell is the chap who writes the Sharpe novels. It fairly clips along for the last half and the characters who had up until then been two dimensional placeholders for future events suddenley spring to life and the entire first half provides a richly painted backdrop for the intrigues and machinations going forward. Hopefully the next two books in the series keep the same pace.
It’s worth noting that this book probably won’t be loved by those who like their Arthur majestic and their Lancelot brave and honourable. Merlin and Galahad don’t disappoint, though.
January 27, 2009 at 7:08 pm
Yes – it’s an excellent series. I particularly like the way that you see how the legends differ from the ‘real’ characters.