It's Arthur, Jim, But Not As We Know It (The Winter King - Bernard Cornwell)

Member Name: Mad_Wicca

Product:	The Winter King - Bernard Cornwell
Date:	12/02/02 (307 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Well written, Exciting, A fresh approach to an old tale

Disadvantages: None!

In the Mad Wicca household it tends to be Mr. Mad Wicca who does the lions share of our comestible shopping, usually at 3 am when our local all night Tesco is free of screaming children and people who leave their trolleys in the middle of the aisle whilst they go off to look for a packet of digestives. When he returns from these late night forays, more often than not, he’s bought me a little present, anything from a bar of chocolate to a soft toy witch (that I’d had my eye on for some time but no one had picked up on my many dropped hints for Christmas!)

One time he came back with a book nestled between the potatoes and a tin of beans and said, ‘I thought you might like this.’ Now although I am an avid reader it’s not often I buy myself Brand New books, preferring instead to scour car boots and charity shops to keep my reading addiction fed. I know what authors and genres I like and I know what I’m looking for, so when Mr Mad Wicca handed me my Brand New book, Harlequin by Bernard Cornwell, I’d never heard of the author and, after reading the back of the book, wasn’t sure if it was something I would like. Still, I thanked my ever-loving husband and plopped my Brand New book on a bookcase whilst I put the shopping away.

It wasn’t until I had run out of something to read a few weeks later that I came across my Brand New book again and decided to give it a go. Coffee made, fire lit and a hob-nob or six to hand I snuggled down on the settee and began to read. From the first page I was gripped, totally and utterly wrapped up in this fantastic Brand New book. After reading about 100 pages I thought, ‘I wonder what else Bernard Cornwell has written?’ I flicked to the front of the book and was shocked and surprised to find he was in fact the author of the Sharpe series. This is where a bit of a dilemma set in and I began to question my literary sanity.

First I’ll apologise to
any Sharpe fans and then to any avid Bernard Cornwell fans and finally to any Sean Bean fans. I hate Sharpe. I hate Sharpe with a passion. Sorry. I don’t like Sean Bean at all and I just can’t watch the Sharpe TV series. Because of this I hadn’t realised that Bernard Cornwell was the creator of Sharpe and if I had I think it would have put me off reading Harlequin. But now here I was 100 pages into a book I was really enjoying, written by a man who was also the author of something I really disliked. Even so, I decided to put my prejudices to one side and continue with the book.

To be honest it didn’t mar my enjoyment of Harlequin and I was glued to the end, sad to turn the last page, but rather pleased to discover that Bernard Cornwell is one hell of a storyteller. As I stuffed Harlequin back onto my bulging bookcase I decided I’d keep my eyes peeled for more of Cornwell’s work next time I was doing a charity shop crawl. Well, it’s taken a good few months but last week I came across The Winter King, the first volume in the Warlord Chronicles, whilst scrutinising the Scope shops bookshelves. And I have to tell you it’s probably the best 75p I’ve ever spent.

The Winter King comes at the Arthurian legend from a totally new, fresh and original angle. Before you start reading this book I’d suggest you put out of your mind anything you may have read about the tales of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. This is not Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur. This is nothing like any book you may have read, or will ever read again, about Arthur, Merlin, Guinevere or Lancelot.

So, with our minds wiped clean of all knowledge of Arthurian myth let us take a journey back in time to the Dark Ages, to the 5th Century, a time we know little about today. The mighty Romans have deserted Britain, leaving behind their long, straight roads, square built villas and aqueducts, all o
f which are now falling into disrepair. Some towns are still trying to cling to the Roman way of life but they are few and far between.

The savage Saxons rule the land from London to the Wall of Hadrian. All the British have to call their own is Dumnonia (Somerset and Devon), which is surrounded on all side by uneasy clans, who are sometimes friends, sometimes foes, depending on the political machinations of the day, or how much gold they need to keep the peace. To the west lies Powys (Wales) ruled by King Gorfyddyd, South West King Marc of Kernow (Cornwall) rules. Over the water Demetia (Ireland) is governed by Oengus Mac Airem and his feared Blackshields. They should all be uniting to rid the land of the Saxon invaders but broken oaths and secret desires to claim the title of Pendragon, High King of Britain, mean civil war is often and bloody.

If all this was not enough to contend with Uther Pendragon, the High King has died leaving only his crippled baby grandson Mordred in his place. Now men must be chosen to protect the young heir until he is old enough to take his place as King. Whilst all this is going on Christianity is beginning to get a grip on the country and some of the people are beginning to forget the true Gods of Britain and the Old Ways.

Our guide through all this turmoil is Derfel (pronounced Dervel). Derfel is a monk writing the tale of Arthur and Merlin down for Igraine Queen of Powys pleasure. But before Derfel became a monk he lived as a boy in the care of Merlin, in the village atop the Tor at Ynys Wydryn (Glastonbury). Here Merlin collected all the waifs and strays that he came across and they formed a strange, but united, community. It is here we meet Arthur’s sister Morgan, who is one of Merlin’s Priestesses, and Merlin’s lover Nimue, another priestess whose life and fate is tied up with Derfel.

Merlin is combing Britain and the lands across the sea to find the Thirteen Treasures of Br
itain, which will bring the Old Gods back to the people, and he pops in and out of the tale, ignoring the wars and petty squabbles, far too distracted by his task to bother over the fate of the kingdom. When Merlin’s village is sacked by Gundleus, King of Siluria, Derfel and Nimue just manage to escape with their lives and head for Caer Cadarn (South Cadbury Hill) to seek protection from Prince Mordred’s guardians.

Here is where life really starts for Derfel when he is trained as a warrior and eventually, after many adventures, joins Arthur’s troops. Arthur is not High King, nor does he want to be, even though he is Uther’s illegitimate son. What Arthur wants is to unite the clans of Britain and drive out the Saxon’s so that the baby Mordred will have a whole Kingdome to rule. In this he nearly succeeds but unfortunately he meets Guinevere and things go disastrously wrong from there.

And so Derfel leads us through battle after battle as Arthur tries as best he can to get his plans back on course. I have to say that I never thought reading about a battle could be just as tense and exciting as watching say the film Gladiator’s battle scenes, but they are all that and more. Cornwell takes his time with the battles, building the tensions as the warring sides face each other, sometimes for hours, before finally attacking. When the attacks come they are just as gory and dramatic as any you will see on the big screen. Men die in horrible, bloody, slow ways, women are raped, houses torched, children slaughtered. You can feel the fear and tension of the exhausted warriors as they fight from dawn to dusk, sometimes fearsomely outnumbered, to protect their child King.

Whether they win or lose I shall not say here, I’ll leave that for your reading pleasure. Also, this is just a fraction of the tale that Cornwell weaves so well in The Winter King, there are sub-plots galore that serve to build the characters an
d personalities of the story. This book holds something for everyone, with villains aplenty, for instance you’ll hate the arrogant, coward Lancelot and awful Bishop Sansum. If you like to read about adventure, romance, history, war, politics, intrigue, or your just looking for a different angle to the Arthurian legends then this is the book for you.

Bernard Cornwell has done a marvellous job with a tale that seems as old as time, his research leaving no stone, with or without a sword, unturned. The Winter King brought the Arthurian Legend alive for me far more than any other work I have ever read on the subject, and part of me feels that Cornwell has probably got closer to the truth than any other author before.

At the back of the book you will find the Authors Note’s, where he talks about his research and how he came to decide what to leave in and take out of the tale. It’s a long book at 495 pages but once I had it in my hands I couldn’t put it down and I’d finished in a couple of days, not wanting to read on so it would last me longer, but dying to know what happened next! As it is such a long book you can lose track of who’s who and what’s where so Cornwell has provided a handy list of characters, place names and a map at the front of the book. I’m normally quite good at following plots but believe me I had to have a good few flicks back to keep track of people and places.

Some of the characters names are real tongue twisters so a handy hint from Mad Wicca here: a ‘dd’ in a name is pronounced ‘th’ and a ‘ll’ in most cases is pronounced ‘kl’. But even with the tongue twisting names and myriad characters this is defiantly one for your ‘to read’ list. Now I have to keep my eyes peeled in the charity shop for the next two books in The Warlord Chronicles, Enemy of God and Excalibur, unless some kind Dooyooer who has no use for them
anymore would like to donate them to the Mad Wicca library, I’d name a shelf of my bookcase in your honour and everything… ;-)

If you want to find out more about Bernard Cornwell and his work then pay a visit to his official website. Website http://www.bernardcornwell.net/index.cfm

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