The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell

The first installment of Bernard Cornwell's New York Times bestselling series chronicling the epic saga of the making of England, like Game of Thrones, but real (The Observer, London)-the basis for The Last Kingdom, the hit television series. In the middle years of the ninth century, the fierce Danes stormed onto British soil, hungry for spoils and conquest. Kingdom after kingdom fell to the ruthless invaders until but one realm remained. And suddenly the fate of all England-and the course of history-depended upon one man, one king. From New York Times bestselling storyteller Bernard Cornwell comes a rousing epic adventure of courage, treachery, duty, devotion, majesty, love, and battle as seen through the eyes of a young warrior who straddled two worlds. Editorial Reviews From Publishers Weekly Bestseller Cornwell leaps back a millennium from his Richard Sharpe series to tell of the consolidation of England in the late ninth century and the role played by a young (fictional) warrior-in-training who's at the center of the war between Christian Englishmen and the pagan Danes. (Most of the other principal characters--Ubba, Guthrum, Ivar the Boneless and the like--are real historical figures.) Young Uhtred, who's English, falls under the control of Viking über-warrior Ragnar the Fearless when the Dane wipes out Uhtred's Northumberland family. Cornwell liberally feeds readers history and nuggets of battle data and customs, with Uhtred's first-person wonderment spinning all into a colorful journey of (self-)discovery. In a series of episodes, Ragnar conquers three of England's four kingdoms. The juiciest segment has King Edmund of East Anglia rebuking the Viking pagans and demanding that they convert to Christianity if they intend to remain in England. After Edmund cites the example of St. Sebastian, the Danes oblige him by turning him into a latter-day Sebastian and sending him off to heaven. Uhtred's affection for Ragnar as a surrogate father grows, and he surpasses the conqueror's blood sons in valor. When father and adopted son arrive at the fourth and last kingdom, however, the Danes meet unexpected resistance and Uhtred faces personal and familial challenges, as well as a crisis of national allegiance. This is a solid adventure by a crackling good storyteller. Copyright ® Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate paperback edition. From Booklist An acknowledged master of rousing battlefield fiction as evidenced by his crackling Richard Sharpeseries, Cornwell also deserves praise for his mesmerizing narrative finesse and his authentic historical detailing. Here he introduces a new multivolume saga set in medieval England prior to the unification of the four Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Northumbria, East Anglia, Mercia, and Wessex. Weakened by civil war, Northumbria is invaded by the fearless Danes, and Uhtred, the rightful heir to the earldom of Bebbanburg, is captured by the enemy. Raised as a Viking warrior by Ragnar the Terrible, his beloved surrogate father, Uhtred is still torn by an innate desire to reclaim his birthright. Fighting as a Dane but realizing that his ultimate destiny lies along another path, he seizes the opportunity to serve Alfred, king of Wessex, after Ragnar is horribly betrayed and murdered by Kjartan, a fellow Dane. Ever watchful and ever practical, Uhtred awaits his chance to settle the blood feud with Kjartan and to seize Bebbanburg from his treacherous uncle. Leaving his hero suspended on the threshold of realizing his desires, Cornwell masterfully sets up his audience for the second volume in this irresistible epic adventure. Margaret Flanagan Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an alternate paperback edition. Review Intoxicating....Thrilling....Cornwell conveys the disquiet of change and the melancholy of extinction as few historical novelists manage to. (Washington Post Book World) Enter Cornwell's vividly drawn ninth-century Kingdom ... after this dip into the Dark Ages, we want to go back. (Entertainment Weekly) Enthralling ... the desperate, heroic struggle of Alfred the Great ... against the seemingly invincible Vikings. (Wall Street Journal) History comes alive. (Boston Globe) A crackling good storyteller. (Publishers Weekly) Cornwell .... makes the usually gloomy ninth century sound like a hell of a lot of fun. (Kirkus Reviews) Highly recommended ... another great historical series in the making. (Library Journal (starred review)) Masterful....[An]irresistible epic adventure....Cornwell deserves praise for his mesmerizing narrative finesse and his authentic historical detailing. (Booklist) --This text refers to an alternate paperback edition. From the Back Cover The first installment of Bernard Cornwell's bestselling series chronicling the epic saga of the making of England, like Game of Thrones, but real (The Observer, London)-the basis for The Last Kingdom, the hit BBC America television series. This is the exciting-yet little known-story of the making of England in the 9th and 10th centuries, the years in which King Alfred the Great, his son and grandson defeated the Danish Vikings who had invaded and occupied three of England's four kingdoms. The story is seen through the eyes of Uhtred, a dispossessed nobleman, who is captured as a child by the Danes and then raised by them so that, by the time the Northmen begin their assault on Wessex (Alfred's kingdom and the last territory in English hands) Uhtred almost thinks of himself as a Dane. He certainly has no love for Alfred, whom he considers a pious weakling and no match for Viking savagery, yet when Alfred unexpectedly defeats the Danes and the Danes themselves turn on Uhtred, he is finally forced to choose sides. By now he is a young man, in love, trained to fight and ready to take his place in the dreaded shield wall. Above all, though, he wishes to recover his father's land, the enchanting fort of Bebbanburg by the wild northern sea. This thrilling adventure-based on existing records of Bernard Cornwell's ancestors-depicts a time when law and order were ripped violently apart by a pagan assault on Christian England, an assault that came very close to destroying England. --This text refers to an alternate paperback edition. About the Author BERNARD CORNWELL is the author of the acclaimed New York Times bestselling Saxon Tales series, which includes The Last Kingdom, The Pale Horseman, Lords of the North, Sword Song, The Burning Land, Death of Kings, The Pagan Lord, and, most recently, The Empty Throne and Warriors of the Storm, and which serves as the basis for the hit television series The Last Kingdom. He lives with his wife on Cape Cod and in Charleston, South Carolina. --This text refers to an alternate paperback edition. From The Washington Post You will look in vain for burnt oatcakes in this novel of King Alfred the Great; like Bernard Cornwell's brilliant trilogy of novels on King Arthur, which lacked both Holy Grail and enchanted sword, The Last Kingdom caters to those of us whose appetite for rehashed legends was satisfied long ago. In addition to providing thrilling combat action and satisfying details of material life, military accoutrement and battle tactics, Cornwell's best historical fiction pleases us mightily in the way his renditions of the great actors and events of yore stray from received versions. Such contrariness is partly the product of meticulous research and partly of a mischievous sense of humor. Happily, both inform The Last Kingdom throughout. The Alfred of history and fable was learned and just, a pious man of delicate health who saved 9th-century England from being entirely colonized by pagan Danes and was elevated to sainthood after his death. Indeed, W.C. Sellar and R.J. Yeatman identified him as England's first Good King in 1066 and All That -- which peerless repository of mangled historical cliché went on, naturally enough, to confound him with Arthur. The Alfred whom Cornwell sets before us is also learned and just, and he's pious in spades, always wearing out his knees in prayer and cherishing such relics as a feather from the dove that Noah had released from the ark and a toe ring that had belonged to Mary Magdalene. But he is also a compulsive, if remorseful, fornicator, a martyr to hemorrhoids and intestinal distress and, at times, a hard-nosed conniver. What we see of him in this, the first volume of a projected sequence, comes through the eyes of one Uhtred, whose tale, narrated from the vantage of old age, this really is. Born of noble stock in Northumbria, Uhtred is only 10 in 866, when he witnesses the battle that brings death to his father, a morose man, expecting the worst and not fond of children. Captured and adopted by the far more congenial Ragnar, a fearless, high-spirited Danish lord, Uhtred embarks upon a perfect pagan boyhood, freed of the trammels of Christianity. He spends his hours burning green muck off the hulls of Danish ships, shield painting, cattle slaughtering, house thatching, tending charcoal burns and practicing with his sword, all admirably described -- and, eventually, in youthful sexual dalliance, not described, but which would have brought fire and brimstone down on his head in a Christian community. The boy does not miss his father, or monkish censure or the noxious grind of learning to read, and becomes quite the pagan Dane in most ways. Uhtred's great object in life is to fight in a shield wall -- one of Cornwell's specialties (whereby warriors advance in a row, shields overlapping) -- and to reclaim his inheritance, the family domain and stronghold in Northumbria. His uncle has taken possession of both, cementing his hold by marrying Uhtred's father's widow. Vexed loyalties begin to proliferate in Uhtred's youthful bosom: toward England, toward the good-natured Danish lord, against a treacherous Danish villain, toward Danish paganism and against English Christian morality. Treacheries and prevarications abound, fortunes reverse, battles rage, and soon enough the youth ends up back with the English -- and his loyalties, well shuffled, begin to gravitate toward Alfred. This feeling turns to rueful wonder when he realizes that the great man has sent him on a mission meant to kill him, a breach of saintliness Alfred commits more than once. This is a most enjoyable novel, and Cornwell has seasoned it with dashes of intoxicating pedantry. He shuns the word Viking (which describes an activity rather than a people or a tribe. To go viking meant to go raiding) and eliminates horned helmets (for which there is not a scrap of contemporary evidence). His prose is not always the equal of his historical imagination and sense of character: He does not, for instance, achieve Patrick O'Brian's marriage of language and vision. Still, he does convey the disquiet of change and the melancholy of extinction as few historical novelists manage to. The England of the 9th century conjured up here is a palimpsest, an ancient isle giving ghostly testimony to successive civilizations. Prehistoric forts, old when the world was young, still exist, moldering and growing into the land. So, too, Roman roads continue to bear traffic and Roman structures still stand, left behind almost five centuries ago and inherited by peoples lacking the engineering and architectural capability or understanding to repair them. Here and there these marvels of imperial technology, materials and manpower provide the foundations for crude Saxon building, as in London, where huge Roman buildings were buttressed by thatched wooden shacks. Meanwhile, the city's great bridge is falling down, and the old wharves and quays are long rotted so that the waterfront east of the bridge was a treacherous place of rotted pilings and broken piers that stabbed the river like shattered teeth. Place names are abundant in this peripatetic adventure, and in their Saxon forms we find the weird, almost ectoplasmic predecessors of today's tame locutions: Lundene, Eoferwic (York), Suth Seaxa (Sussex), Thornsaeta (Dorset), Defnascir (Devonshire) and Snotengaham. Cornwell wouldn't be his merry self if he didn't teach us that Nottingham was once bountiful Snotengaham, the Home of Snot's people. Nor would he be his generous and indefatigable self if he did not promise us that this story is far from over. Reviewed by Katherine A. Powers Copyright 2005, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved. --This text refers to an alternate paperback edition. From AudioFile In Northumbria in the ninth century, 10-year-old Uhtred is adopted by the victorious Danes after they kill his father. He is trained to be a warrior by King Alfred. Uhtred fights first on the side of the Danes, but eventually he must choose where his loyalties lie as he grows to adulthood. Tom Sellwood is outstanding in this performance, not only in his rendering of the myriad character voices, but also in his ability to re-create the atmosphere of the time period. The battle scenes are so realistic that listeners will feel themselves part of the shield wall, the preferred military formation of that period. With lots of blood and guts, raping and pillaging, the authenticity is hard to deny. Fortunately, this is the start of a series by Cornwell, and if we're lucky, Sellwood will narrate them all. S.S.R. ® AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to an alternate paperback edition.