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toggle_fow 's review for:
The Winter King
by Bernard Cornwell
I asked my dad, a voracious Cornwell reader, if he had ever read this series. He said he'd read the first one, but didn't go any further because it was "goofy."
Goofy is probably not the word I would choose, but honestly I see what he meant.
This book wants to be an unvarnished, history-grounded retelling of what might lie behind the King Arthur stories we have today. You've got almost all the usual puzzle pieces (Merlin, Guinevere, Lancelot, etc.) but it's set in a Britain still on the long downward slide from the withdrawal of Rome, torn between paganism and Christianity, and battered by invading Saxons and internal strife. There's no real magic, just pagan rituals that might invoke the power of the gods OR might just as easily get their power from superstition and a couple of coincidental peals of thunder.
And really, the book succeeds at what it's trying to do. There's enough Arthur there that it's not just a gritty story of horrible war in 500 AD. And there's enough historical feel that it turns legend into something you can imagine having really happened.
I might be judging this book harshly not because this retelling is unenjoyable, but because the actual King Arthur legend itself is pretty unenjoyable. Yes, I love King Arthur above all things. Yes, I hate most King Arthur media. It's just horrible! Guinevere and Lancelot is horrible! Inevitable death and betrayal and a doomed slide toward deepening darkness is... not good! So yeah. There's definitely enough Arthur here.
There's also plenty of rape. There's brief but multiple references to pedophilia and homosexual rape. The paganism, I'm pretty sure, is what my dad was calling "goofy" and it kind of is? There's a lot of animal blood and people blood and urinating on things and entrails and chanting and rolling of eyes back in heads, etc. While Merlin was the best character in the book and had literally the only funny lines, he was barely there. Nimue, who I couldn't stand, was there all the time. Guinevere and Lancelot were horrible, and their whole thing was only just set up in this book, so I know the next one will be even worse in that respect.
And beyond any overtly unenjoyable pieces of the book... the whole book just grinds. The beginning is enormously slow, and even after the plot picks up it still took me forever to get through. Whole days of not wanting to pick it back up again after I set it down. I'll probably go on to at least give the first Last Kingdom book a try, but I'm definitely not going any further with this series.
Goofy is probably not the word I would choose, but honestly I see what he meant.
This book wants to be an unvarnished, history-grounded retelling of what might lie behind the King Arthur stories we have today. You've got almost all the usual puzzle pieces (Merlin, Guinevere, Lancelot, etc.) but it's set in a Britain still on the long downward slide from the withdrawal of Rome, torn between paganism and Christianity, and battered by invading Saxons and internal strife. There's no real magic, just pagan rituals that might invoke the power of the gods OR might just as easily get their power from superstition and a couple of coincidental peals of thunder.
And really, the book succeeds at what it's trying to do. There's enough Arthur there that it's not just a gritty story of horrible war in 500 AD. And there's enough historical feel that it turns legend into something you can imagine having really happened.
I might be judging this book harshly not because this retelling is unenjoyable, but because the actual King Arthur legend itself is pretty unenjoyable. Yes, I love King Arthur above all things. Yes, I hate most King Arthur media. It's just horrible! Guinevere and Lancelot is horrible! Inevitable death and betrayal and a doomed slide toward deepening darkness is... not good! So yeah. There's definitely enough Arthur here.
There's also plenty of rape. There's brief but multiple references to pedophilia and homosexual rape. The paganism, I'm pretty sure, is what my dad was calling "goofy" and it kind of is? There's a lot of animal blood and people blood and urinating on things and entrails and chanting and rolling of eyes back in heads, etc. While Merlin was the best character in the book and had literally the only funny lines, he was barely there. Nimue, who I couldn't stand, was there all the time. Guinevere and Lancelot were horrible, and their whole thing was only just set up in this book, so I know the next one will be even worse in that respect.
And beyond any overtly unenjoyable pieces of the book... the whole book just grinds. The beginning is enormously slow, and even after the plot picks up it still took me forever to get through. Whole days of not wanting to pick it back up again after I set it down. I'll probably go on to at least give the first Last Kingdom book a try, but I'm definitely not going any further with this series.