A review by wardenred
The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman

adventurous emotional hopeful sad slow-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

4.0

One day you will see that it is a mistake to love an empire, or a throne, or a crown, because those things cannot love. They can only die.

This book is a great example of that approach where the MC isn’t really the protagonist. It reminded me of Bloody Rose by Nicholas Eames, a story about an established adventuring band told through the POV of its newest member who ends up well in the thick of things but isn’t really the mover and shaker of the plot. Much like Callum here in The Bright Sword. He is very explicitly a plot device of a character, existing first to provide a lens for the story and then to go with its flow and do the things the narrative needs to get done, but he’s also relatable and likable and not without depth. 

The cast overall is full of colorful personalities, though the villainous ones tend to fall a bit flat. They’re not just bad guys who do bad things for bad reasons, of course; each of them has a motivation that makes some sense and their darkness is tinted with moral greyness. Still, they feel more like they’re there to serve specific plot points and messages rather than to have experiences on the page, if that makes sense. The characters we’re meant to root for, on the other hand, really shine. I particularly appreciated the way queerness was handled: how it was such an integral part of who those specific knights were, but also not the one key thing about them, and how the subject was injected into the setting. Were these characters accepted by the world at large? Not really. Were they able to carve lives for themselves where what the world at large thought didn’t matter? For the most part, yes. On a vaguely related note, literally all the prominent female characters were so wonderful and completely dominated my list of favorites. Guinevere, Nimue, Morgan—I can’t get enough of any of them.

Speaking of the setting, I really enjoyed how the historical aspect is handled here. Arthur’s all too brief reign and its immediate aftermath are slotted rather neatly into the time right after the Romans’ withdrawal from Britain—or, should I say, into a slightly alternate version of it. The parts related to the post-colonialism, the numerous adjustments, and the ongoing struggle between Christianity and pagan beliefs feel so spot-on that they make it easy to take multiple anachronisms in stride, from armor that doesn’t really fit the time period to Baghdad of the Islamic Golden Age being a place that already exists. All of this feels as genuinely appropriate for an Arthurian story as the faeries, magical islands, and mysterious curses. But still, the presence of a real sense of era, a specific time period that lends itself as a background for all the fiction, grounds the story and really helps promote the themes of grief, change, and moving on without quite letting go.

The plot itself is at times a little meandering, but in a way that I can actually get behind: there’s this sense of not knowing what to do, what to expect, if there’s an acceptable future at all, and it’s very in line with, again, the themes and the vibe of the book. At times, though, the structure is where the story suffers. Multiple times, especially in the first half of the book, there are these situations where a chapter ends on the kind of cliffhanger that makes you immediately abandon all other plans and keep reading to find out what comes next. And then what comes next is a flashback. A really vital flashback that adds amazing depth to a character or several and uncovers important details about this version of the Arthurian mythos. A beautifully written one, even. Goes on for miles and miles, while you sit there being all, “That’s cool, but what about the aftermath of the cliffhanger?” Or that’s very much how I sat there, at any rate. If I were reading this book with my eyeballs, I would probably moreo r less skim those flashback chapters in my hurry to get to the “what’s next” part, and that would be a pity, because they’re so good! But so unfortunately placed. It’s like inserting a whole different paragraph mid-sentence.

All in all, I’d describe this as a fictionalized exploration of a specific time period, and a contemplation of certain timeless issues through historical fantasy lens, and a bunch of character studies, all rolled into one. Slow, thorough, sometimes a bit muddled, but ultimately engrossing.
Expand filter menu Content Warnings