The Bright Sword

First book i read about the knights of the round table. I found the book good but its all a bit on the distance. I didn't really feel connection with characters or only on some rare occasions.

The addendum is great, where the author explains what is not historically correct about the book.

This was just as good as everyone said (see Bookmarks). It is long, but to me it never felt like a slog. It also has a fair amount of violence, but apparently I have a much higher tolerance for sword and sorcery-type violence than for gun violence. It's exciting, funny and very well written. The magical battle between Nimue and Merlin had me on the edge of my seat, and that chapter also provided one of my favorite quotes: It was his soul that had been lost, and like so many who'd lost their souls, he had to insist the bargain was worth it and show contempt for those who still had theirs. I really enjoyed getting the backstory for Nimue and each of the knights. Although it's fantasy, it touches on serious/current issues (e.g., diversity, mental health and immigration), and I appreciated that. Excellent storytelling, and I thought the audiobook narration by Nicholas Guy Smith was great as well.

This was magnificent. I loved it and am tempted to buy a copy, even though I read it in only a week, which means there is still time for my wife to read it before we have to return this copy to the library. The imagery is wonderful, and so much of the language is beautiful and flowery, while still being incredibly easy to read and digest. (This is no small feat!) It probably helps that the stories are mostly borrowed, but maybe not! After all, they had to be distilled from centuries of retellings, and choosing which to include and what details and how to tell them is probably also difficult. Maybe even as difficult as coming up with your own plots and stories.

There are many stand-alone stories in here, some of them quite long, but many of them only one or two pages. With only one exception, they all flow brilliantly from one to the next, and I wouldn't change their order. (Sir Scipio's felt like the odd one out, but this is a minor criticism, and I enjoyed it all the same.) There is a version of these 673 pages that could have been released in the form of several books. And there are 4 chapters with pages in front labeled "Book I" through "Book IV". I do think that would have been fine (though possibly frustrating) but I'm quite happy to have read them all at once.

Toward the end of the book, as things are almost entirely already wrapped-up, we get these beautiful paragraphs:

What he wanted was to live in a timeless castle, a world wrought of old gold, where everything was noble and glorious and nothing ever changed. He wanted the battle to be over, he wanted to win and have won and be done with fighting forever and ever.

But of course it wasn't over. Why would the future be simpler than the past? Stories never really ended, they just rolled one into the next. The past was never wholly lost, and the future was never quite found. We wander forever in a pathless forest, dropping with weariness, as home draws us back, and the grail draws us on, and we never arrive, and the quest never ends.

I want to joke that this is how it feels to read this book. But it definitely wasn't! I felt quite satisfied with the endings (so many of them!) present in this book. But I was touched by these paragraphs. They ring truer than just the in-context world of the book. In so much as we can take any lessons from the stories of King Arthur, Grossman's book feels like it is somewhat about this never-ending quest. The search for something, while also wanting to already just have found it. I believe that this is a universal truth, at least it is for me.