A review by capn_beardy
The Winter King by Bernard Cornwell

3.0

First off, a bit of a warning: this is not a book about King Arthur, not really. This is about Derfel, who grows up hero-worshipping Arthur. Oh, sure, Arthur is in it, or at least talked about, a lot. But we don’t even see him til almost a third of the way through. And Merlin? Even farther.

Derfel is an ok protag, but he’s pretty flat for a long swath of the book. And on top of that this book reads like a history account more than a novel, so it’s pretty dry for half of the tale. It does eventually get more exciting, as there are battles aplenty to enjoy and Derf becomes more of an actual person. And while I do enjoy a lot of the historical context it was just really overdone. It seemed like every new town Derfel shows up to another character greets him and then just infodumps him to death.

This book is brutal. I was surprised at how horrible most people were to each other and how everyone accepted it. Defeating the enemy and taking his family as slaves was just what everyone did. Derfel is literally the only person who seemed to have any modern morals, to a certain degree. For the battles and fights this brutality was welcome. But I often felt uncomfortable at how casually men talked about raping women.

This was a really chewy read. Complicated names of people and towns abound. That combined with the more historical writing really bogged down my pace for this book. The latter half got better, but I’m not sure it was enough for me to try the next installment.