A review by carmenghia
The Winter King by Bernard Cornwell

adventurous challenging dark tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

Cornwell is a decent hand a writing, and a solid researcher. He's connected dots from what can be scraped out of that era of history. Yet, yes yet, I just didn't quite enjoy this. It's all battle, gore, rape, oath, battle, enslavement, unnecessary gore, ridiculous oath, reasons why monarchy is a terrible idea, ridiculous allegiance, more rape, lots of spitting, and repeated references to swords with names. To be fair, if the story is engaging, I can be quite forgiving of gore and monarchy and things I don't like, but this just dragged on from battle to battle for causes you never support - who would want Mordred on the throne? Nimue is the only interesting character.
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