Book Talk: Excalibur by Bernard Cornwell

Sum it up: The third book in Bernard Cornwell’s The Warlord Chronicles finishes recounting the legend of King Arthur. This review will be spoiler free.

Thoughts: It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of Cornwell’s.

He’s my go to when I need a really good read. For me, he perfectly captures the tone and setting of a period in history–whichever one he happens to be working in at the time. His books really are like time capsules.

One of the things he does well in particular is incorporating the myth and magic of the time periods. With Excalibur, for example, Cornwell expertly gives us a glimpse of the magic/wizardry of Merlin–but he does it 90% of the time with this sly peek behind the curtains, showing you how much of Merlin’s magic could be attributed to trickery and natural phenomenon. Or is it really magic?

The beauty is, a lot of the times, it’s left up to the reader.

Excalibur caught flak in some reviews for diving too deeply into the side of magic, but I think if true magic ever has any place in any story, it’s in the end of King Arthur’s journey.

In the end, though, it’s not about magic or historical accuracy, it’s about characters. And I struggle so much with writing this book talk post because there are just so many things I want to say about these characters. Derfel, the main character, and Arthur himself are such fantastically crafted characters that when I go to the last book in the series I hated turning every page because I knew it brought me closer to the end.

And that’s really all I can ever ask for from any book.

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