wolfmantula 's review for:

The Winter King by Bernard Cornwell

5.0

adventurous challenging dark emotional informative mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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If there’s one thing I love above anything else, it’s history, history has always fascinated me, and though I haven’t delved much into Arthurian stories, I finally decided that it was time. History is such a unique and beautiful thing that can be shaped many ways based off of real life events, and the legendary Bernard Cornwell did that in such an incredible way with this Arthur retelling. This is my first time reading anything by Cornwell and it most certainly will not be the last time I do so. His prose is elegant and a pleasure to read each sentence even if the story is a bit of a slow burn. To make it better, once he gets to his battle scenes, they are just as beautiful but feel almost cinematic in such an epic way. 

One of the coolest things about this is his explanation why he chose to make certain changes within the story during his authors notes at the end. By removing the more magical and mythological elements of the story, Cornwell was able to tell a compelling story that felt more like a retelling of actual real events of a time during the Dark Ages that lacked material of events, but still making it feel somewhat fantastical. I also loved the decision to write the story in the storyteller narrative style told by first hand account by Derfel, and the periodic break in between to and older Derfel, similar to The Hobbit, The Name of the Wind & Sun Eater Saga. This is a style I’m loving the more I come across it in my readings.

“Magic, she said, happened at the moments when the lives of the Gods and men touched, but such moments were not commanded by men.”

The cast of characters are the typical names you’d still see from Arthurian legend, like Arthur, Owain, Igraine, Nimue, Guinevere, Lancelot, Galahad, and of course, Merlin. But what he does to the characters by humanizing them and making them mere mortals rather than living legends makes them even more compelling. To see their faults put on the front stage and realize that sometimes, with some characters, the victor gets to tell the story they want to hear told. I really liked what her did with Arthur by making him more of a Lord of War rather than a king. But Derfel and Nimue are easily my favorites so thankfully that since this is told from Derfel’s perspective, that he is a very likable character. Merlin though, doesn’t really come in until later, but he is very interesting because he’s a bit more chaotic and his role makes the long story even better.

The very best thing about this story is the narration by Jonathan Keeble, who’s voice reminds me of Matt Berry, who the UK audience may know from many things, but the US audience will recognize him as Laszlo from What We Do in the Shadows. What he did with this narration was masterful, he felt more like a voice actor with how he was into the characters and the scenes more than just a narrator. The fear, the contempt, the love, the angst, I could feel it all, even down to the tremble in his voice or when he sped up a tad as the scene got more and more dramatic. There’s also a voice he uses for a character that sounds like Old Gregg, and I couldn’t help but laugh every time he spoke 😂. It did take me a while to get used to the Welsh & Irish names and the accents he used, but they were on point and made it even easier to immerse myself. I did run into some issues with the audio whispersync production near the final 10% where sometimes a paragraph and sometimes an entire page stopped working while the narration continued, beyond that 5/5 easily.