Death of Kings (The Warrior Chronicles, Book 6) (The Last Kingdom Series)

Product Information

In the years after his death, the muddle of Parliament, sober life under the Puritans and ultimately failure to establish a functioning government meant people started viewing Charles I differently. Bernard has traced his lineage back to 9th C Britain and discovered an Uhtred of Bebbanburg in his family tree). This Anthony van Dyck painting at Hampton Court Palace, dated to around 1637, shows Charles I's daughter Princess Mary at the age of five or six. To illustrate: the Danes know that people in tenth century Britain were a superstitious lot (Uhtred included) and they set up and pay a witch to prophesize the doom of Alfred’s allies and the victory of their own side. But the fun lies in Uhtred’s mature ways of using craft in outwit the Danes and garnering intelligence to spot the Saxons who are about to betray Alfred by allying with them.

There are recurring themes and the structure of each book is generally the same, but it's a highly engaging, entertaining and surprisingly educating read.His pacing is perfect, his protagonists are full of charisma and inspiration, and what makes it EVEN cooler is that it is all based on real events. Gradually the Parliamentarians under military genius Oliver Cromwell began to gain the upper hand in what become the bloodiest war ever fought on English soil. He has manipulated, blackmailed, and threatened my much admired Uhtred so many times that it is hard for me to swallow that English as a language may not even exist if he had never been king.

I just liked it better than most, I think, because it's one of the more balanced of Cornwell's books.These seem only small whinges and in some ways they are but they do jar and as a result sometimes work against what is otherwise a wonderfully imagined world. This novel is a dramatic story of the power of tribal commitment and the terrible difficulties of divided loyalties. He has led warriors, and even armies, all in the name of Alfred the Great, and now Alfred is dying; he is old, sick and full of bitter regret. I just go out into the street and say 'Nathan, time for bed' or 'Nathan, time for supper' and in they come. With a title like death of Kings, and a series that is overrun with Kings, you find yourself wondering which of the many Kings shall be meeting an untimely ending, and how many of those at the hands of Uthred's sword.

The following morning, Tuesday 30 January, the King rose early and dressed for the icy weather, asking for a thicker than normal shirt, so that he wouldn’t shiver, and people wouldn't think he was quaking with fear. Charles inherited his father’s belief in the Divine Right of Kings, a doctrine upheld by the entire Stuart dynasty, one of the most powerful families ever to have ruled Scotland.I have learned not to trust those times, because if the world is at peace then it means someone is planning wars.