Bernard Cornwell is an excellent writer. He can convey blood and guts in a captivating story and he does this in The Warlord Chronicles.
I’m not a big fan of this genre, but I’ve read Cornwell before and enjoyed his work and so I picxked up this first book about Uhtred, the hero of the series. And series it is, I went on to read all nine books and I’m hoping for a tenth.
The story is seen through the eyes of Uhtred, a dispossessed nobleman, 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.
My Amazon Link : The Last Kingdom (The Saxon Chronicles Series #1)
