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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   1526 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 5, 2026

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Excalibur, the third and final book of the Warlord Chronicles. Enemy of God was even better than the first book. The author has already covered all the scraps of Arthuriana I'm familiar with, so I have no idea where the story will go next. 10/10 would recommend.

I thoroughly enjoyed Robert Harris’s Cicero trilogy (Imperium, Lustrum, and Dictator), the great orator’s professional life and the waning of the Republic seen through the eyes of Cicero’s scribal slave.

Your recommendation for post-Roman Britain is now on hold in my library audiobook app.

That sounds really interesting as well. I'm halfway through the last book, so I'll check it out next.

I'm a big fan of Arthuriana and may check this out. However, a quick glance at the wiki page suggests that it subverts a lot of things I'd rather not see subverted. While the stance on Christianity isn't clear, I've run into... too many examples to enumerate of ~Arthurian fiction from that era which indulge heavily in eye-rolling disparagement. At least this one doesn't sound obnoxiously feminist?

Curious as to your take.

Personally I adore Lawhead's Pendragon Cycle, especially the first two books, which do something really cool by weaving in the Atlantis myth. Also, I think because of Lawhead's progressive brain tumor, his writing seems to have gotten steadily worse over his career after those books, but last I checked (a while ago admittedly) they still stand up well.

Cornwell is compelled to shit on Christianity (at least in the Arthurian trilogy, Warlord Chronicles, the archer books, and at least one of the Sharpe books), with a consistency that bothers me. It’s his single biggest deficiency. I can’t think of anyone else who writes battles so well.

I have the same aesthetic aversions that you do, I think. There is no girlbossing, women are portrayed as either passive victims, clever manipulators of the egos of men, or wild eyed semi-feral holy women, all of which are (to me) very plausible and period accurate.

The author justifies his revisions by putting the story in the mouth of a narrator with a very specific POV. The narrator is a pagan, a warrior, and a commoner who by chance learns how to read a bit when young and who is at the right place at the right time to witness or participate in many of the greatest eventa of Arthurian legend. One of his best friends, a noble born Christian cavalryman ("knight") would have told the same story but with different emphases and interpretations, and it would sound much more familiar to fans of "Le Mort D'Arthur."

I get the sense that the author is both a fan of Arthurian legend and of 5th century British history and has done his best to reconcile the two without doing a disservice to either. It's gritty and real, but it's not "grimdark." And there is no projection of 20th century morality back in time.

I'm not a huge Arthuriana buff. He does change some characters I think, but in a way that leaves the door open for the later "canonical" interpretations of them to still make sense. Arthur, for example, has the air of confidence, nobility, and invincibility you've come to expect when leading men or speaking publicly. But in private, when confiding to the main character, he reveals that he is sometimes wracked with doubt or grief or barely-controlled anger. I think it's pretty clever. Instead of tearing down or subverting the Arthur you expect, or making him into the bad guy, the author shows the psychological toll that singlehandedly bearing the destiny of Britain on his shoulders takes on him.

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