No doubt we’ve all had moments in our lives when we think “wow, I really should have listened to my father on that one.” As far as books are concerned, my biggest such moment was when I finally sat down to read Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin series. I had been putting them off for years despite my father pushing them at me, and as a result I spent a long time in the dark when I could have been reading perhaps the best historical fiction ever written. My father didn’t raise any fools, though, so having learned my lesson about Patrick O’Brian, when he (my father) sent me a box full of Bernard Cornwell’s novels a while back, I put them in my stack, in the special spot I reserve for books that will allow me to blow off a little steam and have some fun. My father’s taste in historical adventure fiction, it turns out, remains reliable.
Cornwell is apparently best known for a series of books about an English soldier during the Napoleonic wars by the name of Sharpe (adapted into a television series starring Sean Bean), but these particular books, of which The Last Kingdom is the first, are called “The Saxon Stories”, and follow the rise of King Alfred the Great, the man who unified England in the face of repeated (successful) Danish invasions. I studied Alfred a bit when I was in school, and it’s exciting stuff, even when you’re hip deep in Sweet’s Anglo-Saxon Reader. Cornwell chooses to tell the story from the perspetive of the fictional Uhtred of Bebbanburg (in Northumbria, just south of the Scottish border).
Though perhaps lighter on social details than an O’Brian book, Cornwell’s choice of narrator allows the reader to see both sides in the conflict between Saxons and Danes as human beings out to make the best lives they can for themselves and their people. Uhtred is captured by the Danes as a youth, and raised by them, and so we, as readers, see more of the pagan Danish customs than the mostly-Christian English do, and we are better able to understand the Danes as a people. For a long time, even as the Danes ravage England until only Wessex stands free, Cornwell is rather obvious about directing the reader’s sympathies towards the Danes. Not that it’s hard. They are strong, proud, a little scary, and seem to have a greater capacity for joy in them than the dour English (though also, it seems, a greater capacity for cruelty and violence). Though there are battles a-plenty in The Last Kingdom, the real story here (as it is the other three books in the series) lies in Uhtred’s confusion over his place in the world. Should he remain with the Danes, who raised him and whom he loves? Or should he return to the English and take revenge on those who killed his father? He’s a walking, talking metaphor for England in the 9th Century, really, on the cusp of becoming a new entity with its own identity, it’s own traditions, but unwilling to completely let go of its past and its ties to Scandinavian culture.
The Last Kingdom has all the things that are great about historical adventure fiction. Thrilling battles, fun characters, and most importantly a convincing sense of time and place. Not the deepest book I’ve read this year, but one of the most fun.
Next is The Pale Horseman, also by Bernard Cornwell.
