I honestly can't remember why I DNF'd this book. I'm going to give it another try. I can remember getting a bit irate with the common way the story was being told - like it was following the Disney Sword and the Stone version but without the good writing Disney had? I'll have to try it again to remember.

*All thoughts and opinions are my own.* ( )

In a nutshell, this is the retelling of the King Author myth spanning from Author's birth through his rise to the kingship. As Arthurian legends go, this one tends towards the strictly realistic and pulls no punches about the state of the world at the time.
Artorex is the foster son of a Romanized Celtic nobleman, Ector, and his Roman wife Livinia, living a comfortable life at the Villa Poppini. However, as he reaches maturity, he discovers the truth of his parentage. His father is the evil and cruel High King Uther Pendragon, and his mother is the tragic Queen Ygerne, stolen from her beloved husband by Uther. Uther resists all who may take his crown - even in death – and wise men in the court feared for the baby’s safety. So his parents were told he was stillborn, and he was spirited away in order to protect him from the jealousy of the King.
Over the years that follow, three mysterious strangers visit the villa and check on the progress of young Artorex, eventually asking that he is trained in the ways of the warrior. From humble beginnings with horse and sword, Artorex's ability grows as he is trained by Targo, an old Roman Centurion, and the two eventually go from being adversaries to friends.
Artorex’s reputation builds as he exposes a child murderer associated with his foster brother, Caius, and comes to the attention of the local people and eventually Uther.
In an attempt to kill Artorex, Uther sends him on a suicide mission to take a Saxon stronghold but unwittingly gives him the chance to grow in popularity and fame. Uther also orders the death of the young man’s family and the destruction of his home.
Artorex had been reluctant to acknowledge his relationship to the tyrant, but this sets the steel in his character, and he becomes determined to replace Uther and redress the wrongs committed during his time on the throne. This part of his story closes with Artorex being crowned as Arthur, King of the Britons.
I'm in no position to question the historical accuracy of the novel, but the work has clearly been thoroughly and academically researched.
As a work of imaginative fiction, the first part of this trilogy is tremendously stirring stuff and rather well-written, taking time to establish the historical context of the period, considering the backgrounds of the personalities and making those characters come vividly to life through a number of personal challenges that they have to face. Prophesy and destiny are in this way mixed with history and personality, cutting through the legend to the people underneath, making it all very real and meaningful and thoroughly engaging. ( )

This is a good retelling of the Arthurian legend which mostly sticks to the familiar storyline and characters. The book, which is the first in a trilogy, deals with Arthur's upbringing as Hector's foster-son, his education and training as a warrior right up to his becoming High King of Britain.

There is no use of magic in this story, the focus is more on the conflict between Celts, Saxons and Romans. ( )

This is a great read, full of action and adventure, about the rise of King Arthur. Since the book ends when Arthur is finally crowned king, I hope this is the start of a series. ( )

I've only recently become familiar with some of the famous works surrounding King Arthur. Names like T.H. White, Tennyson's Idylls, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and more were introduced to me during an Arthurian Seminar I took my last semester of school. As I already have a huge love of all things legend and folktale, it is only natural that King Arthur stories would grab my attention and create a sort of monster.

Read the rest of this review at The Lost Entwife on Oct. 14, 2013. ( )