Lev Grossman's "The Bright Sword"
A Review
I’ve been in love with the King Arthur legend since I was a wee lad: noble knights in shining armor (Lancelot, Sir Galahad), heroic quests (the Holy Grail, the Lance of Longinus, The Questing Beast, The Dolorous Guard), chivalry (protect the weak and defenseless), mysterious wizards (Merlin, Morgan le Fay), magical entities (the Lady in the Lake, fairies, Avalon), magical weapons (Excalibur, Clarent, Galatine), and the adulterous love affair between Lancelot and Queen Guinevere that breaks the round table. I love all that stuff.
When I found out Lev Grossman had written a version of it, I was intrigued.. He’s the author of the excellent Magicians series, essentially Harry Potter for adults. Even better, Syfy adapted the book into a strong five-season TV series that ran from 2015 to 2020. I was in.
I read T.H. White’s “The Once and Future King” when I was in high school, but I have to admit, the stories didn’t cohere for me. They are at best, disjointed, and many are told secondhand. Characters have no depth or consistency. But I loved the idea of the round table and chivalrous knights. So, of course, I ran to the theater with my fiancé (now wife) to see the 1981 movie “Excalibur.” I liked it but it was a mishmash of stories similar to White’s book and just plainly weird. I still loved the lore though.
Grossman fixes all of that. He presents a through line that I hadn’t seen before. Each character has a well-described back story, a narrative arc, that contributes to the overall saga. He doesn’t try to make everything realistic like in the Bernard Cornwell series, “The Warlord Chronicles;” a historical fiction trilogy that reimagines the Arthurian legend in a gritty, realistic setting of post-Roman Britain. No, he embraces the anachronisms like knights wearing plate armor, England, tournaments, castles, and Camelot. He expertly weaves magic into the story, such as casually sidestepping into the fairy world, as if it were as ordinary as eating breakfast in the morning.
At the end, Grossman writes a fascinating historical footnote that describes the Arthurian legend. He says that Arthur likely started in a collection of elegies for fallen warriors called “Y Gododdin.” And then, for 1400 years, each author that picked up the story added their own twist. Geoffrey of Monmouth (”Historia Regum Britanniae) in the twelfth century promoted Arthur to king, invented Merlin, and the “traitorous nephew—not yet son—named Mordred.” The Norman poet, Wace, added the Round Table 20 years later. Poet Chrétien de Troyes added the Holy Grail, Camelot, and the Arthur-Guinevere-Lancelot love triangle.
Grossman says that “Arthur didn’t spring to life fully formed, he was deposited in layers, slowly, over centuries, like the geological strata of a landscape... by authors who weren’t much interested in historical rigor.”
That is fascinating.
Back in the 1990s, my wife and I did a spur-of-the-moment trip to England. We didn’t have a plan. We we’re just trying to get away. We decided that we would just chase the Arthur legend. We visited Castle Tintagel (Arthur’s birthplace), Camelot (now a cow pasture), Glastonbury (site of the legendary Isle of Avalon where Arthur was taken to heal after his final battle, Arthur and Guinevere’s burial site, a rest stop where Joseph of Arimathea is said to have brought the Holy Grail, and entrance to the fairy realm of Annwn). It didn’t matter that none of that is true in the historical sense. All of those locations invoked the feeling of the Arthurian legend and I was in heaven.
If you’re a King Arthur fan, Grossman’s book is for you. It invokes the Arthurian legend in a fresh and coherent way unlike anything I have experienced before.
Recommended for Arthurian Legend Fans
Recommended for Lev Grossman fans
Recommended for “The Magicians” book series and TV show.
Needs to be a movie
Source
Lev Grossman, 2024. The Bright Sword [Book]. Narrated by Nicholas Guy Smith. Goodreads. URL https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/201750794-the-bright-sword
References without Notes
Alfred Tennyson, 1885. Idylls of the King [Book]. Goodreads. URL https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/393636.Idylls_of_the_King
Aneirin, 1300. Y Gododdin [Poem]. Goodreads. URL https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1250908.Y_Gododdin.
Bernard Cornwell, 1994. The Winter King (The Warlord Chronicles, #1) [Book]. Goodreads. URL https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/68520.The_Winter_King
Bernard Cornwell, 1996. Enemy of God (The Warlord Chronicles, #2) [Book]. Goodreads. URL https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/68524.Enemy_of_God
Bernard Cornwell, 1997. Excalibur (The Warlord Chronicles, #3) [Book]. Goodreads. URL https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/68521.Excalibur
Boorman, J., 1981. Excalibur [Movie]. IMDb. URL https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082348/
Geoffrey of Monmouth, 1136. Historia Regum Britanniae: Arthurian Classics [Book]. Goodreads. URL https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51523760-historia-regum-britanniae
Lev Grossman, 2009. The Magicians (The Magicians, #1) [Book]. Goodreads. URL https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6101718-the-magicians
Sera Gamble, John McNamara, 2015. The Magicians [5 Season TV Series 2015 - 2020]. IMDb. URL https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4254242/
Thomas Malory, 1485. Le Morte d’Arthur: King Arthur and the Legends of the Round Table [Book]. Goodreads. URL https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/672875.Le_Morte_d_Arthur
T.H. White, 1958. The Once and Future King [Book]. Goodreads. URL https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43545.The_Once_and_Future_King