Bernard Cornwell’s War of the Wolf is the latest, but (fingers crossed) not the last chapter in his Saxon Tales, the basis for the popular British television series The Last Kingdom, which tells of the ninth-tenth century struggle to unite the Saxon, Danish and Norse settlements into one Englaland, with one king and one (Christian) church.
In this eleventh book in the series, Uhtred is now over sixty years old but still riding against his enemies, and still a force to be reckoned with. Although Cornwell sensibly cuts Uhtred some slack --- his seconds in command ride either side of him to protect him, and he fights from the third row in the shield wall now, letting younger warriors take the brunt of battle. But Uhtred is still the strategist; his battle craft assures victory against all odds.
His new enemy is Skoll, a Norse raider who has been driven out of Ireland and plots to wrest the kingship of Northumbria from Uhtred’s Danish son-in-law, Sigtrygger. Skoll has a blind sorcerer who can kill men with the power of his sightless eyes, and berserkers who eat poisonous henbane to induce a battle frenzy like a howling pack of wolves. Their savagery terrifies anyone who tries to face them. Anyone but Uhtred.
Uhtred himself seems to have grown more stark and implacable in dealing with his enemies as he has grown older. Yet at the same time maturity has allowed him to understand how competing loyalties and bonds of affection blur the boundaries between friendship and enmity.
Uhtred is a man who has lived his life straddling two worlds — the Saxons and the Danes, the Christians and the pagans. That struggle continues, with Uhtred as always, caught in the middle.
The end will come, inevitably --- but for fans of the Saxon Tales, hopefully, not too soon.
Click HERE to read the review from Kirkus Reviews.
Click HERE to read the review from the New York Journal of Books.
Click HERE to read the review from the Book Reporter.
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