Hello everyone. Welcome back to Bibliophilia Book Reviews. Today I am reviewing The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell. This book is the first installment of The Saxon Stories. However, the series was renamed The Last Kingdom after the premiere of the TV show on BBC America based on these novels in October 2015. I will talk both about the books and the TV adaptation here wherever relevant.
Broadly speaking, The Last Kingdom series can be summarized as the story of Alfred The Great and how he and his descendants repelled the Viking invasion of Britain, united the four kingdoms of the island—Northumbria, East Anglia, Mercia, and Wessex—and formed what today is England. The story is told from the first person perspective of Uthred, son of Uthred, who was once Lord of Bebbanburg and one of the most powerful lords of Northumbria at the time of his death. After his father’s death, however, Uthred Uthredson becomes a dispossessed lord of the North because Aelfric, his uncle, takes Bebbanburg as his own after his brother dies in the Battle of Ewoferic.
I am Uhtred, son of Uhtred, and this is the tale of a blood feud. It is a tale of how I will take from my enemy what the law says is mine. And it is the tale of a woman and her father, a king. He was my king and all that I have I owe to him. The food that I eat, the hall where I live, and the swords of my men, all come from Alfred, my king, who hated me. This story begins long before I met Alfred. It begins when I was ten years old and first saw the Danes.
Uthred, however, is taken captive after the Battle of Ewoferic and becomes a slave in Ragnar The Fearless’ household. But as the years go by, Uthred learns to love the Danes and becomes Ragnar The Fearless’ adopted son. Uthred lives with the Danes for 11 years, and in that time the Viking lords—Ragnar, Ivar, Ubba, Halfdan, and Guthrum—conquer Northumbria, East Anglia and (northern) Mercia. Wessex is the sole remaining Saxon kingdom in the island, hence the title of the novel, and the Danes make several attempts to conquer it. But the Wessex king, Aelthelred, and his brother (and successor) Alfred defeat them every time.
By then, Uthred is 21 year old and he is an untested youth eager to stand in the shield wall. He is hot-tempered, brash, and foolish. But his life changes when he is forced to leave Northumbria and offer his sword to Alfred and Wessex.
“Destiny is all, Ravn liked to tell me, destiny is everything. He would even say it in English, “Wyrd biõ ful ãræd.”
The first time I read this book was in 2017 after I finished reading The Warlord Chronicles by the same author, and I thoroughly enjoyed it back then too. I am an avid reader of historical fiction, and this novel (and the series as a whole) has a lot of things going for it that I like: the Viking invasion of Britain, the assimilation of two peoples, two cultures—Saxon and Dane—living with one another but at the same time at war with each other, and the religious war in the background between Christians and Pagans (something that I first read about in the medieval poem Beowulf; I loved this poem, BTW, but I hated the movie).
Bernard Cornwell is known for writing superb battle scenes (and he does), but I think that another thing he does really well (from reading both The Saxon Stories and The Warlord Chronicles) is making his readers get thoroughly invested in the lives of his characters, and Uthred is a prime example of that. Uthred is loosely based on a historical figure of the same name, known as Uthred The Bold, that once lived in the 10th century, but that is where all the resemblances between the two of them end. Cornwell’s Uthred, son of Uthred, who was the son of another Uthred, is the rightful Lord of Bebbanburg, but that stronghold was stolen from him when he was captured by the Danes in the year 868, and he has sworn to right this injustice done to him and take the fortress back. But he still has a long way to go before he can do that. And destiny will make him a sword of Wessex before he can achieve his lifelong dream.
But Uthred does not like Wessex. He resents being tied to Alfred even though it was the only thing he could do at the time to survive. When Uthred first arrives at Wessex, he is accompanied by his childhood friend and now lover Brida, a young girl from East Anglia who was also captured by the Danes. Unlike Uthred, however, she scorns her previous Saxon life and becomes a whole-hearted Dane. But Uhtred cannot let go of his desire of recovering his birthright and is forever torn between his love of his ancestral home and his love for his Danish family. Brida is important to Uthred’s story because she is Uhtred’s only remaining link to his previous life. But when she leaves him to follow Ragnar The Younger, Uthred loses his sole connection to his life as a Dane and his chances of ever going back to that life are now slim. Despite having given his oath to fight for Alfred for one year, Alfred also knows that Wessex cannot survive without Uthred and he seeks to bind him for a longer period of time by proposing that he marry. But Alfred also wants Uthred to renounce his gods and become a Christian, so he isn’t entirely forthcoming to Uthred as to why he chose this particular bride. And Uthred, completely smitten with his new wife, doesn’t see anything untoward at first but then learns the truth and despises Alfred for it. Uthred though doesn’t fault his wife, and he later learns to love her. Women are forever in Uthred’s life, and both Brida and Mildrith in this book represent the two sides of his inner turmoil.
“I had learned to hide my soul, or perhaps I was confused. Northumbrian or Dane? Which was I? What did I want to be?”
Wessex is also where Uthred learns to be a warrior and where he meets his closest friends. Most of his friends are Christians (Beocca, Willibald, Leofric, and later Finan and Pyrlig) but during those first few years in Wessex it is Leofric who becomes Uthred’s closest friend. He is also the one who teaches him how to fight, and it is in Wessex where Uhtred has the chance to stand in a shield wall and prove himself a warrior, when he fights and defeats Ubba at Cynuit.
This book was adapted to television in 2015 when the first season of The Last Kingdom premiered on BBC America. The series was picked up to compete with the popular HBO series Game of Thrones and it too readily became popular among viewers and acquired its own followers. The two series, however, could not be any more different. I have watched both of them (and like many, I did not like the last season of GoT and now I don’t know what to do with the DVDs I bought of previous seasons because I doubt I’ll ever watch them again) and can say that the last scene of Episode 1, Season 1, where Uthred (Alexander Dreymon) and Brida (Emily Fox) go back to Bebbanburg and Uthred shows Aelfric (Joseph Millson) the severed head of the man he sent out to kill him is one of my favorite scenes of the entire series. They did a very good job at adapting the story to television in this first season and followed the book(s) as faithfully as possible. I will continue watching it.
I Really Liked this book, and I look forward to continuing Uthred’s story as well.
