Death of Kings

Author: Bernard Cornwell

Genre: Historical Fiction

Rating: B

Alfred the Great is dying, and the kingdom that he has spent his life building is poised to be torn apart by his many rivals.  Enter Uhtred of Bebbanburg, Alfred's semi-tamed pagan warrior, who is in love with Alfred's daughter and has grown to share Alfred's dream of a united England.

I love the journey that Uhtred has taken in this series, and Death of Kings shows him finally beginning to be recognized for all he has done.  To me that's always been the most infuriating thing about this series: every time Uhtred accomplishes something he's very completely pushed back down into his place.  I don't think a post-Alfred Wessex will be all that much more forgiving of Uhtred's pagan ways than the Alfredian Wessex, but at the same time I know the history and I know the tide's about to really turn for the Anglo-Saxons in the war against the Danes.  I know it's only a matter of time before Uhtred really gets the recognition he deserves from the king that he so resentfully acknowledges and yet loyally defends, and this novel shows the start of that recognition.  My favourite part of it all is the way in which Uhtred uses Lady Æthelflæd.   Their love has been one that's long in the development, and I love the nature that it's taken - especially as Uhtred doesn't change the way that he acts when she's not around.

The one thing that actually really annoyed me about this novel was the anachronastic language.  Previous books have always referred to the people using more time appropriate language; it wasn't the English, Welsh, and Scots fighting against the Danes so much as the Anglo-Saxons, Britons, and Picts, with references to the Gauls and the Celts.  This book speaks of Scotland and Wales, to my great disliking.  I really hope that it's just in my edition that this has happened, although I know better than to think that it is.  Having read a lot of Cornwell's works before, in particular the similarly timed and themed Warlord Chronicles I was especially disappointed by this switch just because it didn't seem like him.  It was a downside to an otherwise stellar book.