When we lived in Chicago, I worked in the Loop & there were a couple
of
bookstores right nearby. So, as you'd imagine, I pretty much
haunted them & one
day, like manna falling from Heaven, B. Dalton got a huge shipment
of
remaindered books & aggressively marked them down. So I found
a bunch of great
books & a few that looked good & were so cheap, it was worth
trying them. Two
were from a series I'd never heard of, The Camlud Chronicles,
by a Canadian
author named Jack Whyte. In fact, they were Canadian versions
of the books and
as it turned out, had never been published in the U.S.
As it happened, the books, set in 5th Century Britain as Roman occupation
is
ending, related the events leading up to the forging of Excalibur &
were
terrific. I passed them on to Chuck & he liked them.
We both prowled around
looking for the succeeding volumes & couldn't find them.
As if that weren't bad
enough, I was at Dartmouth Bookstore one day & found the first
volume in
Hardcover with cover blurbs announcing an exciting new series.
They were just
getting around to publishing American editions, so we were looking
at three
years before the third volume came out here. But for once, Chuck's
notorious
craftiness worked in my favor. On one of his trips he found himself
in Canada &
popped into a bookstore, where, lo and behold, there were the next
two volumes.
He read them & passed them on & I've had them for awhile.
I was hoping to wait
until the series was done before reading them, but Zack has now read
the first
two & was clamoring for the third, so I advanced my timetable.
This third entry in the series tells the story of the cousins Caius
Merlyn
Britannicus and Uther Pendragon & their battles with King Lot of
Cornwall.
(Fans of King Arthur will recognize Uther as Arthur's father &
everyone knows
Merlin.) Merlin is now the keeper of Excalibur and has been entrusted
with the
task of finding the man worthy of wielding it.
Keeping in mind that it had a high bar to clear, I did not like this
volume as
much as the prior two (I'd actually rather that he'd worked backward
in time,
since we all know the story of Arthur). However, there were two
aspects of the
book that I liked very much.
First: Whyte shows the tremendous effect of the longbow. One of
my notorious
pet theories, known as The Longbow Theory of Democracy (I'll develop
it more
fully elsewhere), is that the development of the longbow was a great
democratizing force. It was cheap, easy to produce and was effective
even
against armor. It was "The Equalizer". A peasant couldn't
afford armor and a
steed and a sword, but all these accouterments became superfluous if
a longbow
could defeat them. Thus, where armor favored a caste system of
power, the
advent of the longbow was a vital step towards a more equal distribution
of
power & self-government.
Second: One of the central themes of the book is the resentment of Britain's
Christians towards the Roman Church. One of the pivotal episodes
in the book
concerns the Church's emissaries & their effort to reign in the
distinctly
British version of Christianity that the Islanders practice.
This is another
pet theory; that there was something unique in the intellectual/political/
social milieu of Britain that gave rise to Capitalism (Adam Smith),
Democracy
(Arthur, Robin Hood, Simon De Montfort, Magna Carta, etc.) and Protestantism
(Henry VIII, Elizabeth, Puritan Revolution, etc..).
So, I'm giving this one a sort of mixed review. I loved the first
two volumes
and enjoy the way he's developing themes that I agree with. However,
this entry
didn't meet the high standard of his previous efforts.
GRADE: B
Charlie responds:
Just read your review of it and tend to agree... still a fun series,
but the
steam starts to go out of it when he approaches events we're more familiar
with. However, if you think of Arthur as escapist fantasy with
heroes
descended from Romans, Whyte is the way to go.
For an interesting alternate viewpoint, read the Cornwell trilogy on
Arthur
that develops many of the same religious themes, but portrays Arthur
et al
completely differently. Here he's of British Isles lineage, much
dirtier
and less heroic. The battles with the church are cast much more
starkly as
heathens vs. Catholics, with blood in the air throughout. I liked
both
Whyte and Cornwell, came away thinking that Cornwell (of Sharpe fame)
writes
a much better battle scene and offers a scenario that's probably closer
to
true. And since his battle scenes are better, the more familiar
history is
a better read.
