Book 5 of The Saxon Stories

This is the fifth in Bernard Cornwell’s Saxon series and here we see Uhtred back to his best. After an incident with a crazed monk, Uhtred is forced to flee Alfred’s Wessex and strikes north to Anglia with a mind to return to his ancestral home of Bebbanburg (Bamburgh Castle) where he encounters old friends and foes.

After some complications in the earlier books, Cornwell finally seems ready to start grasping the story as it affects Uhtred instead of the grand historical events of the period. In this way, this novel feels very much in keeping with the first two books. We see the return of Ragnar and Gisela and Uhtred returning to his pagan Viking roots away from the Christian piety of Wessex, a place that Uhtred clearly hates to be by now.

Of course, comparisons will always be drawn with ‘Sharpe’. Both men are no nonsense, both are good soldiers, they are brave and fearless fighters and elements in their character working against them when it comes to those in authority. For Sharpe, it is the fact that he is an Officer raised from t’ranks. For Uhtred, it is that he is a pagan in Alfred’s very Christian Wessex. Though the conflict between the two men was interesting, it was starting to feel a little stale in “Sword Song”. Perhaps Cornwell felt the same way and took the decision to remove Uhtred from Wessex. You also get the feeling that he is starting to wind up the Saxon Stories now.

3.5/5

Book 4 of The Saxon Stories

The major plot to this novel is the abduction of Alfred’s daughter, Aethelflaed and Uhtred is given the task of rescuing her. There is more intrigue, more historical development and the attempts to capture London into the kingdom of Wessex, a city being fought over by the Mercians, the Danes and by Alfred’s Wessex.

In some ways this is the weakest of the four novels despite the historical events it deals with and the inclusion of one of the English history’s most fascinating women just as she is about to take her place in shaping the country’s destiny.

Uhtred is now commander of a Burh, married and with a second child on the way and we are two years after ‘Lords of the North’. This is a good addition to the series but I’m starting to get to the point where I want the series to begin the process of wrapping up now.

Book 2 of The Saxon Stories

Following on immediately from the first novel, Uhtred finds himself frustrated by the tentative peace between Guthrum and Alfred and heads off to Cornwall as mercenary for a British King fighting off the Danes. During the course of the novel, Alfred retreats to the marshes of Athelney, and his kingdom is reduced to a few miles square. Uhtred is still a follower of the “heathen” ways despite Alfred’s attempts to Christianise him. One tactic is marrying him off to a widowed noble woman and giving him her former husband’s lands… land that is riddled with debt, something that Uhtred realises was designed to trap him. The novel ends with the historic Battle of Ethandun and this is where Cornwell really shines. The battles are well researched and well written, informative as well as entertaining.

There is not really that much to stand this book out from any of the others. It is, after all, the second in a series of what is expected to be a 6 or 7 volume story. That said, the same praise and criticisms from the first book remain. The formula is typically Cornwell, the characters are a little flat with the exception of Uhtred who acts as a narrator. The fictional characters gel well into the narrative with the historical figures and Cornwell admits throughout that he has jiggled around actual events to make it fit the course of Uhtred’s tale.

This really lacks the impact of the first for much of the book

3.5/5