Philip Womack 

Death of Kings by Bernard Cornwell – review

The sixth of Bernard Cornwell's Saxon series taps into a particular kind of male fantasy, writes Philip Womack
  
  

bernard cornwell
Bernard Cornwell 'explains things again in case we didn't understand the first time'. Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian Photograph: David Levene/Guardian

This book, the sixth in Bernard Cornwell's bestselling Saxon Stories series, is set during and immediately after the death of King Alfred the Great as the Saxons and the Danes prepare to slug it out for power and the chance to shape what will become England. It's like Game of Thrones, but real (mostly, as Cornwell has made up his own story, but based it on historical facts).

Uhtred, Cornwell's main character throughout the series, is a bluff, gruff and tough Saxon; he has served his king dutifully, even though he doesn't particularly approve of him. He doesn't like the church and its pious ways, and cleaves to the old gods, which allows him to carry on rutting, stabbing and feasting without compunction. He's canny and strategic, able to act in clever ways: in one skirmish he uses a banner to trap his enemies; it shows Jesus Christ crucified, and Uhtred takes great joy in seeing it spattered with hot blood.

Cornwell uses simple techniques to excite his readers. The narrator is Uhtred himself, giving a touch of world-weary vividness. There are long, polysyndetic sentences when things are exciting: "And there was blood in the leaf-mould and a choking sound and a body shaking beneath me and a dying man's sword arm going limp as the spearman kicked his horse back towards me." Dialogue is brief and punchy: "'Is that enough?' 'It's enough, lord.' 'Kill the rest then,' I said." Things are often explained in case we didn't understand the first time: "'Lord, lord King!' the priest gasped. He was out of breath."

There are moments of terror, including one particularly striking episode when Uhtred goes to visit a witch and is drugged, bound and gagged while the naked, shrivelled crone cackles madness. Cornwell's plot is enlivened by passages of clear beauty as he describes the natural world in which such horrors take place: "The current drew the trailing willow fronds downstream. Otters twisted in the water, sinuous as they fled the shadow of our hull."

The novel taps into a particular kind of male fantasy; as such, it works very well. "I am just me, Uhtred of Bebbanburg," says the hero after a brief moment of self-examination in which he ponders the role of Christianity in making people act in a moral way: "I have never tried to be good, though nor do I think I am wicked." The same might be said of Death of Kings.

 

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