Review - Bernard Cornwell, Saxon Chronicles

Having recently finished Bernard Cornwell's Saxon Chronicles series I can highly recommend them. You can find a link with a quick synopsis and series order on wikipedia here.

Your book cover may be different.

Overall I thought the series was good. I like Uhtred and the action made for good reading. For me the series peaked at Lords of the North, dipped slightly at Sword Song, went back up at The Burning Land and then leveled off for Death of Kings.

Lots of action, intrigue and of course Shield Walls. One reviewer on Amazon mentioned that Death of Kings felt formulaic to them but I didn't really have a problem with that. It reminds me of a quote from an interview with Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon about screen writing. "What people need to embrace and accept, if you're going to be a writer in Hollywood, is that every single movie has the exact same structure, exactly, whether it's "Die Hard" or "Night at the Museum." - Ben Garant (full interview here). So my take is, if you're going to have an Uhtred novel, certain things are going to happen. Deal with it.

I would highly recommend this series if you like Dark Age stuff, a lot of period flavor and raucous battle. I thought that Paul of The Man Cave had reviewed this series, but all I could find was a mention of it in his review here. So it looks like I might need to give Robert Low's Oathsworn series a try.

After I read the H.P. Lovecraft collection that is.