The Singing Sword (Camulod Chronicles Series #2) » (Reprint)

Jack Whyte is a Scots-born, award-winning Canadian author whose poem, The Faceless One, was featured at the 1991 New York Film Festival. The Camulod Chronicles is his greatest work, a stunning retelling of one of our greatest legends: the making of King Arthur’s Britain. He lives in British Columbia, Canada.

We know the legends: Arthur brought justice to a land that had known only cruelty and force; his father, Uther, carved a kingdom out of the chaos of the fallen Roman Empire; the sword Excalibur, drawn from stone by England's greatest king.

But legends do not tell the whole tale. Legends do not tell of the despairing Roman soldiers, abandoned by their empire, faced with the choice of fleeing back to Rome, or struggling to create a last stronghold against the barbarian onslaughts from the north and east. Legends do not tell of Arthur's great-grandfather, Publius Varrus, the warrior who marked the boundaries of a reborn empire with his own shed blood; they do not tell of Publius's wife, Luceiia, British-born and Roman-raised, whose fierce beauty burned pale next to her passion for law and honor.

With The Camulod Chronicles, Jack Whyte tells us what legend has forgotten: the history of blood and violence, passion and steel, out of which was forged a great sword, and a great nation. The Singing Sword continues the gripping epic begun in The Skystone: As the great night of the Dark Ages falls over Roman Britain, a lone man and woman fight to build a last stronghold of law and learning—a crude hill-fort, which one day, long after their deaths, will become a great city . . . known as Camelot.

KLIATT

What happened before King Arthur? How did the famous sword get forged? Did Camelot have a beginning? Those questions are answered in the Camulod Chronicles. In this volume, number two in the series (following The Skystone), the Roman Empire is falling, and the Romans who oversee the southern part of the British Isles find more in common with the natives than with their "Italian" roots. The major threat is the northern Celtic contingency. The traditional Roman fighting techniques are no match for the guerilla tactics of these wild men, so the Brits and Romans work together to invent military strategies more conducive to the land: training combat troops differently, breeding larger horses, fashioning more efficient and deadly swords. They also overcome their differences by uniting the two different cultures through marriage, which has been facilitated through true love. Strangely, this work has the tone of a factual historical novel rather than a legendary conjecture. The storytelling seems to be less important than the "facts." As such, it is less compelling than expected. There is too much explanation and not enough drama. Still, the idea of Arthur's forefathers is inherently intriguing. Marginal. (The Camulod Chronicles, Bk. 2) Category: Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror. KLIATT Codes: JSA-Recommended for junior and senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 1996, Tor, Forge, 384p., , Long B