Title: |
The Bright Sword |
 |
Author: |
Lev Grossman |
|
Category: |
Science Fiction / Fantasy |
|
Rating: |
||
Date Reviewed: |
June 12, 2025 |
The Bright Sword tells the tale of Collum, a young man raised in the desolate outer islands. He is alternately abused and ignored, leading a miserable life with no friends but a blacksmith. Collum has a dream of becoming a knight at the court of King Arthur, and so he trains and practices. Eventually, Collum has decided that the time has come to seek his fortune. He steals a suit of armor and a horse, leaving Mull behind. The novel opens when Collum is journeying through Britain to Camelot. Collum is confronted by a nameless knight and engages in a furious battle. But even after Collum has won, the defeated knight attacks again and Collum eventually kills him. Shaken by this encounter, Collum proceeds to Camelot. Collum enters an eerily quiet and deserted castle. He is guided to the room with the legendary Round Table, and find just a handful of knights there: Sir Palomides, Sir Villars, Sir Bedivere, Sire Dinadin and Sir Constantine. When Collum asks where King Arthur and the rest of the court is, he is stunned to learn that those handful of knights are all that remain of the Round Table. Everyone else perished in a battle the previous week, when the forces of Mordred engaged with the army of King Arthur. Arthur slew Mordred, but was mortally wounded himself and spirited off to Avalon. Now these few depressed knights are trying to determine: What Next? How does Camelot get a new king? Already warlords around the land are gathering forces to stake their claims to the throne. Joining the knights is Nimuë, the enchantress who famously trapped Merlin under a hill. In The Bright Sword, magic is real. Nimuë can perform powerful enchantments, as could Merlin before her. Miracles were routine at Camelot, God took an active (if mysterious) role in how things unfurled - it was more than just the Quest for the Holy Grail. In Grossman's tale, Britain is still dealing with the "old ones" - the druids and pagans and forces of faerie that existed before the arrival of the Romans, who brought their Christian God and imposed their beliefs on the citizenry. Now that the Romans are long gone and Arthur is dead, the druids (led by the powerful sorceress Morgan le-Fay) are seeking to regain control of the island kingdom. Although King Arthur is dead, Grossman liberally inserts chapters that are flashbacks to explain how Camelot came to be in this dire state. Each of the remaining knights, plus Nimuë. has his own "origin" story, where we learn how they came to Camelot to join the Round Table. Grossman puts his own spin on the legends, reinventing the stories of King Arthur, Lancelot, Guinevere and Merlin. It is a lot different than what I read in The Once and Future King (but I loved that novel too.) There are plot surprises a-plenty, with perhaps a bit too much deux ex-machina to save our heroes in desperate situations, but when there is so much magic involved, many things can happen. Despite the length, I did not feel this book was too long or in need of editing. It is a book full of knights in battle, magic and quests. Even angels and the forces of faerie get involved. In his afterward, Grossman acknowledges all sorts of anachronisms that he included in his tale. Plate mail did not exist the time of King Arthur. Palomides, the Saracen, couldn't possibly
have been a follower of Islam, since that religion did not exist yet. But since the stories of Camelot were primarily written during the Middle Ages, the anachronisms are now part of the legend, and so Grossman
included them as well.
I enjoyed this book. If you pick up expecting a retelling of The Once and Future King, you are going to find a very different tale. |
