A review by cillefish
The Winter King by Bernard Cornwell

2.0

Solid characters, solid concepts; the writing is unremarkable, but the final product has a kind of boyish charm that I liked. Worth it for me as a less juvenile, more interesting reworking than Jack "thinks a Stonehenge penis joke is clever" Whyte's, and because Cornwell still has Malory on the brain. Some of the pomp and grace of those fantasies come through in the deliberate, semi-awkward contrasts he's always drawing between the story as he's telling it and the story as popular memory owns it. Ynys Trebes is ridiculous but pretty, and its bad end is full of the silly pathos the storyteller thinks he's avoiding. As a kid I enjoyed Howard Pyle's version a lot, so I enjoyed the interplay between the different versions here.