The first book that I have read from my Christmas cache is The Skystone by Kelowna’s own Jack Whyte. It is the first installment in a historical fiction series based on the Arthurian legend, you know Arthur, Merlin, Sir Lancelot, Camelot etc. Now those characters have been made very fantastical over the years with different tellings of the same old tale. The one I remember the most is The Sword in the Stone, a Disney flick in which young “Art” becomes different animals through Merlins magic and at the end of the movie pulls the legendary Excalibur from a stone, thus becoming king of England. I also read some of T. H. White’s The Once and Future King several years back, but became bored with it and put it aside.
This vision of that same tale is much more practical though. It is historical fiction and begins in the middle of the collapse of the Roman Empire, gives some reasons for it demise and shows its effects on Britain and those that call it home. It centers around the making of Excalibur, but instead of the sword being pulled from a stone, it is made from a stone that falls from the sky, a meteorite in fact.
Whoop-dee-doo hey? Well there is of course much more to the novel than the art of smelting. There was enough action and intrigue to keep me interested and enough third century history to teach me some new things without getting dull. Good stuff, I plan on reading more in the series in the coming days.
I love these books. I have the series in first edition. I sent an email off to Jack Whyte, and he enthusiastically encouraged me to call him next time I visited Kelowna so he could sign them.
If you liked this series, check out the 3 books Jack wrote about the crusades called ‘The Templar trilogy’.