Blurb
With The Winter King, the first volume of his magnificent Warlord Chronicles, Bernard Cornwell established himself as the storyteller who could reinvent the legend of King Arthur for our time.
Now with Enemy of God, Cornwell’s magical re-creation continues. Having defeated the last holdouts of civil war in southern Britain, Arthur has secured Mordred’s throne. But he must still face raging conflicts between the old ways and the new, as well as foes more powerful and more dangerous–because they pose as friends.
Brilliantly written and peopled with the familiar faces of legend along with new ones, Enemy of God is an immensely powerful continuation of a modern classic.
My Review
One thing I’ll say about Cornwell novels; once you get to the climax, it’s absolutely impossible to put the book down. Of course, you have to work your way up to the climax, and in book two, I found myself slogging a bit along the way. There are many satisfying episodes; Derfel’s relationship with the lovely (and rejected by Arthur) Ceinwyn; Merlin’s search for the thirteen magical treasures of Britain—especially the Cauldron—that will summon the Gods and destroy the Christians; Arthur’s successful achievement of a peaceful Dumnonia—at least until Mordred reaches his majority. We have a lot of jockeying for position, so to speak, between the warring tribes, which I found a little wearysome. So did Derfel! And then there’s that annoying Lancelot, who you just know is up to no good. And when he decided to get baptized, nobody believed he was serious:
Lancelot, to give him credit, looked exquisitely embarrassed at this sermon; indeed the whole ceremony must have embarrassed him for he was a man of vast pride and fragile dignity, but even so it must have seemed better to him to be dunked in a river than publicly humiliated by losing election to Mithras. The certainty of his rejection must have prompted him to this public repudiation of all the pagan Gods.
But there was more to Lancelot’s baptism than just saving face. He was plotting and planning, and his eventual betrayal was much worse than Arthur could ever have imagined. What about Lancelot and Guinevere? Lots of hints, but poor Arthur is oblivious.
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Enemy-God-Arthur-Warlord-Chronicles-ebook/dp/B006WOVIRC/
