‘The Bright Sword’ Review: Lev Grossman’s Fresh New Arthurian Legend Is This Year’s Must-Read Novel

A modern classic and a must-read for any fan of Arthurian legend.

“I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend: the city of the Men of Númenor; and I would have her loved for her memory, her ancientry, her beauty, and her present wisdom. Not feared, save as men may fear the dignity of a man, old and wise.”

So says the reluctant warrior Faramir in Tolkien’s The Two Towers, as he sets himself to the task of defending Gondor from the might of Sauron and the overwhelming forces of Mordor. In Lev Grossman’s novel, The Bright Sword, our heroic band of misfits faces similarly daunting odds as the days of Arthur’s Britain begin to fade into dusk, and a new age dawns.

It is easy to draw parallels between Tolkien’s Middle-earth and the legends of Arthur’s Britain. Both take place in the twilight of an era. Even victorious, the Fellowship’s quest to destroy the One Ring comes with consequences, for with its passing so too the great elven Rings and their power must fade, and those elves left in the realms of men must pass into the West forever, their songs never to be heard again.

In Grossman’s retelling of the Arthurian legend, Arthur has fallen and Camelot is under the shadow of his passing. Those few Knights of the Round Table who remain are third-tier heroes, clinging to a past that is already washing out to sea, while various pretenders to the throne vye for power. There is still magic in the land, but it is leaking back into the earth and only the dregs of past glory remain. There are still quests to be had, but they are not the quests of old. This is not a historical account or rendition of Arthurian legend like you might find in Bernard Cornwell’s The Winter King, but rather a full embrace of legend and fairy tale, heraldry and knights in shining armor, with a decidedly modern sensibility. More on that in a moment.

The Sword In The Stone

The Bright Sword follows Collum, a young man who grew up hard in the backwaters of Britain, now seeking his fame and fortune as a knight—though he suffers terribly from imposter syndrome. When he arrives at Camelot to seek out his destiny, he’s too late. Arthur is dead, and all that remain are a handful of his worst knights: Sir Bedivere, a one-armed knight who was Arthur’s closest confidant, and who had feelings that run much deeper than friendship for his fallen liege; Sir Dinadan, who harbors a deep secret; Sir Palomides, who traveled to the mists of this distant island kingdom from the hot sun of Arabia; Sir Constantine and Sir Dagonet. The losers of the Arthurian pantheon.

There are other familiar names: Nimue and Morgan Le Fay, enchantresses with very different outlooks on the future of Britain, and which gods should call it home. The druid Merlin rears his ugly head, and is far from the affable rascal of T.H. White’s The Once and Future King, though the two books are both attempts to update Arthur’s legend for a contemporary audience. There is even a bit of Monty Python And The Holy Grail in Grossman’s work. The timeline and perspective hops around between flashbacks and the main story, and often we find ourselves in chapters titled ‘The Tale Of Sir Bedivere’ or ‘The Tale of Sir Palomides’ and it’s hard not to recall Monty Python’s classic.

Grossman is best known for his Magicians fantasy series, which in many ways takes the magic school formula of Harry Potter and combines it with an adult take on Narnia. Here, he explores another kind of fairy tale, less plot-driven and more whimsical. Collum and his companions drift in and out of the real world and the fae realm they call the Otherworld. At times, the story can seem almost dreamlike. There are quests and villains, but at its core this is a story about heart, and about finding and then letting go of what we thought was important. Unlike Gondor, the age of Arthur’s Britain truly is over, and it will never be the same again.

Grossman’s lyrical prose has never been better. He captures the forlorn whimsy and verdant splendor of this long-lost world across every page and every turn of phrase. This is not a page-turner, but for those who enjoy immersing themselves in the beauty of language, there is much to love and to be enchanted by. The characters are well-crafted and fleshed out, and provide anchors in a story that often feels adrift in a twinkling fog. We are carried down rivers and into groaning old castles and dark caverns with fell beasts, but there is no singular purpose. This is a story about following those who are lost—or at least those who have no choice but to wander.

I am at times simply in awe of Grossman’s prose. Take this passage, for instance:

“They sailed west back toward Camelot, straight into the tangerine sunset, over the ocean like a great rippling meadow bright with millions and millions of sparks, while a broad bank of purple cloud hung just above the dissolving horizon, lit up from behind, as though it were holding back a mighty torrent of molten gold.”

Or this description of Collum’s home on the small island of Mull in the Out Isles:

“It was a cold, humpy place of treeless green hills, their flanks streaked with silvery streams, their peaks dragging low white clouds like tufts of wool caught on brambles.”

Some, of course, will find this style of writing off-putting and too rambling or the prose verging on purple, the narrative perhaps not story-driven enough. Others will eat it up with a spoon. I am firmly in the latter camp. I devoured this book and then thought it about it for a very long time before putting pen to paper to write this review. I am reminded, at times, of Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn, another whimsical fairy tale with lucious prose that makes me want to live in the book rather in this noisy world.

A Contemporary Arthurian Tale

As I noted above, this novel is one that contains “modern sensibilities.” This can be a red flag in some contexts, but Grossman handles the balance of myth and modernity deftly in The Bright Sword, with both reverence paid to the old stories and a sense of humor. The legend of King Arthur has been retold countless times over the centuries, each time for a modern audience, all while rooted in a sense of timelessness, as every lasting legend must no matter how many incarnations it takes. This is not a historical reading of what Arthur’s Britain might have been like back in the 5th century, but nor is it a simple retelling of the kinds of legends that have sprung up since before Thomas Malory's Le Morte d’Arthur, filled with pageantry and historically inaccurate armor and strange women lying in ponds distributing swords. It is a bit of all of this, in many ways, with plenty of references to the Romans who have now fled the land, and the Saxons who are coming to make it their own. There are knights with a strong sense of chivalry, and dueling beliefs in faeries and Jesus Christ, and a deep passion for questing. But there is more to it than that.

The Bright Sword also broaches issues that are decidedly more contemporary: abandonment and abuse, sexual and gender identity, even immigration, all in ways that feel natural and organic rather than preachy or pedantic. There is deconstruction of the heraldic myth without the author falling prey to easy platitudes, and without the kind of too-easy subversion that risks shattering the myth entirely. We are on a fun quest with knights and we are never scolded for enjoying the adventure. Care and respect has gone into this story, which allows it to sit comfortably alongside the pantheon of Arthurian legend that’s come before, while telling new tales filled with new ideas about what these stories mean. That’s no simple feat.

Long Live The King

The book’s meandering narrative leads to a surprisingly poignant and moving ending that left me both satisfied and more than a little sad. As I neared that ending, I wasn’t sure if Grossman would be able to stick the landing; stories like this can easily fizzle out, fumbling for a lack of perceptible direction. Look no further than Monty Python And The Holy Grail’s sputtering final minutes. It’s a wonderful film that simply ran out of ideas (and money) in the end.

In one of the rare flashbacks in which we journey into Arthur’s own thoughts, we come to this passage:

“The past was a cursed wound. No perfect knight would ever come to heal it. He would never be good enough. For the past there could only ever be forgiveness, nothing more. He wished only to be better than he was.

“It was the future that required his attention. Understanding was filling Arthur as if from a miraculous spring. Britain itself was a wounded land, cloven in two, British and Roman, pagan and Christian, north and south, old and new. It was born in blood, divided eternally against itself, its different natures so mixed it could never extricate itself from itself. No miracle would heal that wound either. But Britain would heal, all on its own, slowly, the hard way, if only he would let it. It would always be a scarred land, a complicated land, but complicated was not the same as broken. It would never be pure, no more than that Grail in the circle was pure. It would not be perfect. But it would be whole.

“And when the land was whole, perhaps the king would be whole too.”

In the end, we get plenty of the good stuff—epic battles, dastardly betrayals, wild magic, desperate duels and enchanted swords—but the final chapters also give us something more: Healing, grace, understanding and catharsis— as well as a glimpse into our own troubled times, and how they really are no different from any other. We are all a part of this story, shaping it as we go, a little less heroically than those towering figures in the songs and ballads who came before, but still fumbling along as best we can. The losers and the misfits alongside the heroes and the kings.

The Bright Sword is available now at Amazon and other booksellers, including your local bookstores where you will find a rather beautiful hardcover. I highly recommend you give it a read. As a lifelong reader of Arthurian tales, watcher of Arthurian movies and devourer of all things fantasy, historical-fiction and mythological, it’s one of my very favorite novels of the year.

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This review first appeared in Forbes.