I couldn't finish this one. While the subject matter is one I'm obsessed with, it struggled to bring me into the story and connect with me. There's something about a male author writing about a male protagonist that is hard for me to vibe with and enjoy reading. It was boring, too long, and took forever to get anywhere.

I'm a huge fan of this author's Magicians series, as well as a lover of Arthurian tales, so I was really excited to read Bright Sword. And it did not disappoint! I loved the unexpected timeline with our hero arriving after the party is over, and his story arc felt real and satisfying.

My mom and I read this book at the same time and we both loved it. I ended up going back and forth between the hardcover copy and the audiobook because I wanted to stay with the story on my commute to work! The Bright Sword was a great re-visiting and updating of the King Arthur stories that I read as a child; I felt nostalgia for my childhood while reading, but at the same time was getting a deeper and more adult take on the classic tales. This is a long book, but each chapter is it's own story (while staying within the greater overarching plot) so I could read a chapter and feel a sense of completion without getting overwhelmed that I had hundreds of pages left to go.

As a medieval historian I absolutely loved this fresh take on Arthur that honors the stories and legends while updating them in ways that feel unique and authentic. Grossman brings the roundtable-- or what remains of it-- to life, rendering in vivid detail and making very human characters of larger than life legends. At once epic and deeply personal-- truly gorgeous.

I loved the Magicians series by Lev Grossman and had high hopes for this book. Was not disappointed! All of his books have this thread of despair running through them, this disappointment that magic or God or adventure can't fix what's broken inside. It works perfectly with the legend of King Arthur. This would be a great book club read.

"The Bright Sword" by Lev Grossman is the must have fantasy for Arthurian fans.

As it seems tradition of Arthurian tellings, "The Bright Sword" is not a fast paced read. It's a read to pick up and really dedicate your imagination to go escape in Camelot. But when we get there, we see that Camelot is in disarray. King Arthur is dead. The Knights are dead. And we, along with Collum, take the gritty journey through the end.

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I absolutely fell heads over heels for the Magicians trilogy and when I se Grossman had a new book out, I thought heck yar! I discovered Arthurian literature is not for me. There is a lot to unpack and build and because I don't naturally gravitate to Arthurian books, and I had to encourage myself to finish. It's beautiful and wonderful and Grossman includes some darker parts of the story (read the back pages first) but I don't think I was the intended reader. Now if your are and Arthurian fan, READ THIS!

I really really loved this one. I thought the framing of a post-Arthur Arthurian legend was a really inspired choice and I enjoyed the whole cast of characters. So much of this book felt so haunted but in a really satisfying way. I didn’t expect much when I started reading and was delighted.

Wow. Really, just ... wow.
Author Lev Grossman (of The Magicians fame) takes on a classic legend with his new look at King Arthur, the knights of the roundtable, and all the usual, familiar characters whom we've read about in other versions of the legends. Grossman brings us into the story with a new knight, Collum of the Out Isles.

Collum is a wide-eyed teenager, a bastard child who comes from nothing and thus has everything to gain and nothing to lose. Skilled with a sword he sets out to join King Arthur and, hopefully, become a knight of the Roundtable. He needs to prove his skill along the way, taking his first life, which is disturbing to him, but he did everything he could (he feels) to avoid the situation and in the name of Arthur he did what he had to do.

But when he arrives to King Arthur's court, Collum discovers a kingdom in ruins and Arthur himself dead, with the few surviving knights (names Collum once thought of with respect and awe) lost and floundering, trying to figure out what happens next.

It takes Collum's youthful naivete and optimism to wake up the Roundtable knights and look for options to keep Arthur's vision for Britain alive. What follows is a quest worthy of the Knights of the Roundtable, bringing them in contact with all of the characters from the legends and plenty of magic thanks to Nimue and Merlin.

This book is amazing. Grossman has certainly taken his place alongside Sir Thomas Malory, Mary Stewart, and T. H. White as one of the great Arthurian Legend storytellers.

We get a lot of the history of the individual characters through flashbacks. I'm generally not a fan of the device, but Grossman makes it work. It would do the novel a great disservice to have each character 'tell' their history when we meet them, so seeing their history is much more exciting.

Grossman takes a few liberties with characters (and their stories) that we think we know (specifically Lancelot du Lac), and of course adds Sir Collum of the Outer Isles, but, as Grossman writes in his Historical Note:

Arthur’s story has been told and retold for 1,400 years, and it’s never been told quite the same way twice. Every age and every teller leaves their traces on the story, and as it passes from one hand to the next it evolves and changes and flows like water. ... Arthur didn’t spring to life fully formed, he was deposited in layers, slowly, over centuries, like the geological strata of a landscape. It’s one of the things that makes him so rich and compelling. It also makes him, from a historical point of view, a complete mess. ... but the messiness is, I would argue, an authentic part of the Arthurian tradition. It’s always been there—I don’t imagine Malory or Tennyson sweated much over their world-building either.
We don't get the love affair of Lancelot and Guinevere or Guinevere and Arthur - this takes place after all that's done and (nearly) forgotten - but we do get some romance and it's just about the right amount and with an unlikely but appropriate pair.

The magic within the story builds slowly but plays a major part of the story, and Collum takes the heroic journey from innocent, would-be-knight to legend. But with his knightly humility, he tends to shrug it aside.

This was truly a remarkable read. It's exciting to read something - to be among the first - that you can imagine becoming a classic for future readers and something that will be referenced for what it adds to a mythology.

Looking for a good book? Lev Grossman adds to the Arthurian legends with The Bright Sword and you should be sure to read it.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

I tried to get into The Magicians but discovered it wasn’t my thing; however, when I was invited to read this book I was intrigued (I love a good Arthurian retelling).
It seems Grossman may not be the author for me as I wasn’t able to get into this novel either. I only made it about 20% through the story before I lost all interest. There wasn’t anything glaringly bad, it just moved slow and I found I didn’t care about what was happening/would happen next.

Even though it was a DNF for me, I think if you’re a fan of Lev Grossman or Arthurian retellings you should definitely give this one a try.

Thank you to NetGalley and Viking for the copy of this eARC.

This is a lush, richly imagined retelling of the Knights of the Round Table with a focus on lesser-known knights. The novel does many things right, giving the male characters complex histories and inner lives, and examining what it means to live through transformative times. I only wish the women had been as complex and nuanced as the men -- in most cases, they were more plot device than person. The result is a story that will be an easy sell to dedicated fantasy readers, but will have limited crossover appeal for my female patrons.

Collum, a young wanna be knight, arrives at Camelot to make it big...but he's too late. Arthur and most of his knights are dead, and Camelot is falling apart. There are a lot of familiar characters in this story (Guinevere, Lancelot, Morgan Le Fay) but no one is quite what you'd expect. Grossman's Camelot is dark but not as dark and twisted as his Magician's series reworked Narnia. It is full of quests and magic and flawed and complicated humans attempting to be heroes. Definitely worth a read.

I thought this was very good and I will have to add this to the shop shelves. Thank you for the chance for us to review.

The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman

Lev Grossman is not the twin whose books I love more - his brother Austin Grossman’s novel Soon I Will Be Invincible is a masterpiece. But I also really enjoyed Lev Grossman’s Magicians trilogy, as well as his first book, Warped, which shows his love of TNG. For a long time I wondered what he was up to. Now I know - he was writing The Bright Sword, a chonker of a doorstooper fantasy Arthurian novel.

This book was wonderful! Way too long, but wonderful. If you told me it was originally going to be a trilogy and then got smushed into one volume I wouldn’t be surprised. This book is a King Arthur tale focused on everyone except Arthur and the other well known round table members. They all get an incredibly long backstory chapter or two which could’ve been their own novellas. This book was a great joy to read and I highly recommend it.

This was utterly enthralling. The writing was beautiful and I was so engrossed with the story I cannot stop thinking about it!

I've always wanted to like Lev Grossman, but I just couldn't get into the "Magicians" trilogy. When I saw he was tackling Arthurian legend, I was excited to give his work another try, hoping this time it would resonate with me.

If you're a true fan of Arthurian lore, you’ll likely find much to love in this book. But I've never really gotten into Arthurian legends before, and it felt overly dense and too long. Grossman’s writing is as witty and descriptive as ever, but I struggled to connect with the characters. The story shifts between multiple perspectives—Callum, the last of Arthur’s knights, Guinevere, Nimue, and Morgan Le Fay—all of whom have fascinating stories that deserve their own books. As a result, I found myself losing track of the narrative. I usually struggle with narratives that have more than two POVs, so this is just a personal issue. So with that in mind, I am willing to say that this book will likely earn a place among the many retellings of Arthur’s story, but for me, it was just too much to take in.

Thank you to Lev Grossman, PENGUIN GROUP Viking, and NetGalley for sending me the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I have been meaning to read Lev Grossman’s Magicians trilogy for some time, it is part of my ever expanding TBR list. It has probably moved up a couple of levels now that I have read his big release this summer The Bright Sword. Ever a sucker for an Arthurian tale, when I saw that this was coming out, I knew that I would get to it before his more well known works.

Collum, later Sir Collum, is an ardent follower of King Arthur, who has never met the King, and never ventured off his far Northern island. When circumstance forces him to leave the only home he has ever known, he steals a suit of armor and heads off for Camelot. Before he even gets there he has fought a duel, wandered into Fairie and followed, albeit unwittingly, Morgan Le Fey. Collum’s path does not follow the straight and narrow, and while he quickly makes it to Camelot, is quickly knighted, and quickly sets off on a quest, he remains mostly unsure of his own abilities to the very end of the tale. The perspective of Collum allows us to travel alongside the great stories at a distance, as a passionate observer of the characters from the stories he has loved. Even as he becomes part of the stories himself, he never loses that perspective of one looking in on greatness.

By the time Collum arrives at Camelot, Arthur and most of the Knights are dead, and the round table is but a shadow of its former self. While the story follows Collum it is interspersed with side quests into the backgrounds of some of the lesser known knights of the round table. Sir Bedivere being the most well known, and closest to Arthur of the group, is given the first aside, and we learn much about his love for the once and future king. In these stories, Grossman is able to examine different aspects of the legends, and use different versions of the old stories to craft his own narrative for Collum. There is a fairy story for one knight, a gender story for another, and even a wibbly wobbly timey wimey story for one of them, which reminded me very much of the latest series of Hilda on Netflix, and may be my favorite or all the tales spun here. The stories feel familiar whilst at the same time feeling that something new is being brought to the (round) table.

The story brings you around to a female perspective more often than is usually accomplished in Arthurian tales, and the ending will definitely surprise you. Guinevere and Nimue are presented in this story in a way that hearkens less to the familiarity of the old stories, and more to the unknown. On a basic level the differences are that Guinevere is portrayed as no great beauty and Nimue is far more trustworthy. While both women have something to offer in this book, I particularly adore the story of Nimue in Grossman’s retelling. Especially her relationship and battle with Merlin. Grossman draws together minor stories and deities of legend, in a patchwork of support for Nimue, so that when the two wizards finally come to blows, she is carried through the air by reaching out to all the lesser known spirits that she has tended to over the years, it is a beautiful example of kindness over might. Even with new perspectives for Nimue and Guinevere, this is still a tale that is heavy on the testerone. If you are looking for something centered even further away from the men of the round table I would suggest Queen of None by Natania Barron, which like Grossman’s book favors Bedivere heavily, but focuses on Arthur’s sister and her experiences of Camelot and Arthur’s Briton.

One of the persistent themes in this novel that I found to be especially engaging was the relationship between Arthurian Christianity and the traditions and gods of old Briton. They feel especially relevant this year when conversations around the American church and politics has become something aside from christianity. The entrenchment of Christianity in Arthur’s Britain echoes that level of arrogance and superficiality which can be found in the American evangelical movement. There are some very interesting conversations in this book about tradition and how systems of government can change the very religions they are purporting to protect. Nimue’s perspective on her own Christianity and use of magic is especially enlightening, and in an election year like this, I feel that Grossman has really put his finger on the pulse of where religion and faith clash. I have been a card carrying Christian and regular Sunday attendee for almost thirty years now, and found some real peace to be found in the way Nimue’s faith carried her from Christ on a cross, to magic in a field.

Grossman ends the novel with several pages of information about the origins of Arthurian legend and why he has taken the liberties he has. In some ways, I wish this had been a preface instead, as it greatly enhanced my feelings towards the story. Grossman does not shy away from the darker parts of the tale, the rape of Igraine, the incest of Arthur, but he also draws together the ideas about a Britain in suffering, a patchwork of people and systems from Rome, to Arthur to the arrival of the Saxons. He does a masterful job of presenting a country in political, social and moral turmoil. Having been working on this narrative since 2015, I think its appearance in the American landscape of 2024 is a work of the fates.

Few if any mythos have engendered as many stories in Western literature as the tale of King Arthur, going back to his first mention in ancient Welsh poetry (dated anywhere from the 6th to the 10th centuries) all the way up to a dozen or so (possibly more) retellings in the last few years. Into that mix now comes The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman, who vacuums up seemingly every variant version of the story, such as The Prose Tristan, Le Morte d’Arthur, Chrétien de Troyes’ works, and others, riotously reveling in their many contradictions, doublings and additions to present us with a wildly entertaining but also thoughtful tale.
(see link for full review)

I expect nothing less than to be blown away when Lev Grossman decides to write a Camelot book. This book is beautiful, dark, haunting, and well written. It's a long read, but I barely noticed after being swept into the storyline. If you like Arthur books, or you like The Magicians, you will want to read this one. The characters are so human and yet so otherworldly. I was sad when this was over.

This epic tale of a ragtag fellowship rebuilding Camelot in the wake of King Arthur's death follows Collum, plus several lesser members of the round table. In a world on the brink of chaos, this crew must find Excalibur and a new king before the world descends into chaos. Featuring a cast of characters like Morgan le Fay, Lancelot, and Queen Guinevere, but with newly imagined facets and plot twists, readers of Arthurian legends will find much to love. With its blend of adventure, magic, and historical depth, this title will appeal to high fantasy readers everywhere.

I absolutely loved The Magicians trilogy, but this novel could not hold my interest. Ultimately a DNF.