The Bright Sword

There’s a lot to like in this tale-telling from post-Roman Britain! Collum is an aspiring knight from the Hebrides who makes the long journey down to Camelot (maybe somewhere around Gloucester?) only to find that Arthur is already dead and the Knights of the Round Table are dead and scattered (mostly dead) in the wake of the Lancelot-Grail cycle. Undeterred, Collum rallies the benchwarmers for a last adventure across the porous boundaries dividing our world from the world of fairies and gods.

This world has much to recommend it! The magical world feels at once erratic but internally consistent, with such a distinct British twang to it that I struggle to believe that Grossman hasn’t spent time here. In the book (as in reality), the past remains eternally present: not something that happened and then got written down—but something that you can walk up to and touch. Standing stones, Roman roads, ruined churches, ancient oaks: these are high fantasy tropes but they’re also common features of dog walks within 25 minutes of our front door. The Bright Sword whisks me away to a dream of Britain, but it also plants me back where I am and reminds me that the place I live has been around for a long, long time.

A handful of nitpicks:

• Much like the world of fairy in which much of this book takes place, things get a little disorganised around the middle. The adventure sort of sputters and reignites, knights are picked off individually, characters swoop in on wings of magic and then dematerialise.
• There are frequent digressions to pad out backstories—at times, it feels, only to underscore someone’s death.
• The role of the Christian God waffles: He shows favour only intermittently and at one point declares that He is forsaking Britain entirely (the consequences of which continue to be felt among its people to this very day).
• Grossman also falls into the trap of belabouring the attractiveness of the main love interest, sometimes to the point of distraction. I’m personally not a fan of that, but maybe some people need to be reminded when a woman is attractive.
• I don’t know. What else?
• There are maybe one too many “twists”. Most of them don’t pay off, like Collum’s fairy heritage; I wish I’d have just been told up front.
• Finally, there were a number of moments in the book where it felt like there was a narrative pause to allow the audience to applaud, which doesn’t make sense because this is a book. They usually do it in superhero movies when a cameo happens. The narrative will work it's way up to a badass manoeuvre and then we'll get a one-line paragraph with a bit of ensuing filler.

The battles are hard-won, though, which I appreciated. Collum is good at fighting but he’s not Chosen One-good.

Overall: a romp. On the strength of the world of this book I wandered into a bookshop made out of a converted Methodist chapel and purchased a 60-year-old copy of The Once and Future King.