A novel about King Arthur by Lev Grossman, bookmarks
A gifted young knight named Collum comes to Camelot to fight for a place at the Round Table, but he finds he is too late. The king died two weeks ago at the Battle of Camlann, leaving no heir. Only a handful of Knights of the Round Table have survived. They are not the heroes of legend, like Lancelot or Gawain. They are the oddballs of the Round Table, from the fringes of stories, like Sir Palomides, the Saracen Knight, and Sir Dagonet, Arthur’s fool, knighted for fun. They are joined by Nimue, who was Merlin’s apprentice until she turned against him and buried him under a hill. Together, this ragtag community will set out to rebuild Camelot in a world that has lost its balance. But Arthur’s death has revealed the fault lines of Britain. God has abandoned it, and the fairies and monsters and old gods are returning, led by Arthur’s half-sister Morgan le Fay. Kingdoms turn against each other, warlords lay siege to Camelot, and rival factions form around the disgraced Lancelot and fallen Queen Guinevere. It’s up to Collum and his companions to retrieve Excalibur, solve the mysteries of this shattered world, and make it whole again. But before they can restore Camelot, they must discover the truth about why the lonely, brilliant King Arthur fell, and lay to rest the ghosts of his troubled family and Britain’s dark past.
What the reviewers say
Wonderful… Grossman’s style is airy and 21st century in style, but still leaves plenty of room for magic. He gives each knight a new and detailed story that frees him from the original story while honoring it… Grossman’s take on the Arthurian legend perhaps lacks the grandeur and tragic dignity of White’s classic The former and future king, but it excels in its colorful characterization and thrilling action scenes, of which there are countless. Like White, it uses humor liberally and masterfully… As Grossman’s grand, unusual quest draws to a close, we see Arthur’s waves of Saxon invaders and their many predecessors refracted in a different light, a light that helps illuminate our own turbulent, battle-torn age in a way that only the best epics can.
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Earns its place among the best Arthurian tales emphatically… The book is long, more than 600 pages, and it feels long. The story meanders, but apart from a few chapters of backstory that are, if not unnecessary, perhaps out of place, nothing feels superfluous. This is a narrative that requires and rewards patience… Grossman… is at the peak of his powers with The bright sword, which is full of enviable ideas and implementations. Only a few authors could achieve what he has done: to anchor such a demanding novel in so much tradition and history and yet make it accessible and deeply moving.
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This Arthur seems like a real, three-dimensional person with appropriate flaws and never becomes a cliché. Perhaps such characterization is easier when one works from a template, and Grossman works from one of the greatest templates in literary history… Written in modern English, with chapter epigraphs and occasional poems in Middle English. This approach is clever and much less annoying than being unnecessarily formal… The bright sword made me love fantasy again. The many digressions are pearls of inventiveness that are a lot of fun to read, regardless of whether you already know the story or not.
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