THE BRIGHT SWORD - Lev Grossman

 Wow.  Really, just ... wow.

Author Lev Grossman (of The Magicians fame) takes on a classic legend with his new look at King Arthur, the knights of the roundtable, and all the usual, familiar characters whom we've read about in other versions of the legends. Grossman brings us into the story with a new knight, Collum of the Out Isles.

Collum is a wide-eyed teenager, a bastard child who comes from nothing and thus has everything to gain and nothing to lose. Skilled with a sword he sets out to join King Arthur and, hopefully, become a knight of the Roundtable. He needs to prove his skill along the way, taking his first life, which is disturbing to him, but he did everything he could (he feels) to avoid the situation and in the name of Arthur he did what he had to do.

But when he arrives to King Arthur's court, Collum discovers a kingdom in ruins and Arthur himself dead, with the few surviving knights (names Collum once thought of with respect and awe) lost and floundering, trying to figure out what happens next.

It takes Collum's youthful naivete and optimism to wake up the Roundtable knights and look for options to keep Arthur's vision for Britain alive. What follows is a quest worthy of the Knights of the Roundtable, bringing them in contact with all of the characters from the legends and plenty of magic thanks to Nimue and Merlin.

This book is amazing. Grossman has certainly taken his place alongside Sir Thomas Malory, Mary Stewart, and T. H. White as one of the great Arthurian Legend storytellers.

We get a lot of the history of the individual characters through flashbacks. I'm generally not a fan of the device, but Grossman makes it work. It would do the novel a great disservice to have each character 'tell' their history when we meet them, so seeing their history is much more exciting.

Grossman takes a few liberties with characters (and their stories) that we think we know (specifically Lancelot du Lac), and of course adds Sir Collum of the Outer Isles, but, as Grossman writes in his Historical Note:

Arthur’s story has been told and retold for 1,400 years, and it’s never been told quite the same way twice. Every age and every teller leaves their traces on the story, and as it passes from one hand to the next it evolves and changes and flows like water. ...  Arthur didn’t spring to life fully formed, he was deposited in layers, slowly, over centuries, like the geological strata of a landscape. It’s one of the things that makes him so rich and compelling. It also makes him, from a historical point of view, a complete mess. ... but the messiness is, I would argue, an authentic part of the Arthurian tradition. It’s always been there—I don’t imagine Malory or Tennyson sweated much over their world-building either. 

We don't get the love affair of Lancelot and Guinevere or Guinevere and Arthur - this takes place after all that's done and (nearly) forgotten - but we do get some romance and it's just about the right amount and with an unlikely but appropriate pair.

The magic within the story builds slowly but plays a major part of the story, and Collum takes the heroic journey from innocent, would-be-knight to legend. But with his knightly humility, he tends to shrug it aside.

This was truly a remarkable read. It's exciting to read something - to be among the first - that you can imagine becoming a classic for future readers and something that will be referenced  for what it adds to a mythology.

Looking for a good book? Lev Grossman adds to the Arthurian legends with The Bright Sword and you should be sure to read it.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

5 stars

* * * * * *

The Bright Sword

author: Lev Grossman

publisher: Viking

ISBN: 9780735224049

hardcover, 673 pages