A rudderless nation, lost in uncertainty, searches for its next commander in chief. There’s an uneasy sense that the country’s glory days have passed, and that a monumental turn in history is coming — for good or for ill. How do you find a leader to unite such a fractured, polarized land?
Such is the uneasy world of Arthurian England in “The Bright Sword,” the new novel by Lev Grossman. The tale begins with Collum, a poor orphan who escapes an abusive home and flees to Camelot with nothing but a stolen suit of armor and the dream of serving King Arthur as knight of the Round Table. Just one problem: King Arthur is dead.
Only a few ragged remnants of the Round Table are left, and no one has any idea who the next king will be. The theme of an anxious nation searching for a leader when no one has a clear mandate to govern gives the novel a distinctly modern sense of angst. Wouldn’t it be so much easier if we could just make every candidate try to pull a sword out of a stone and be done with it?
Despite his poor timing, Collum plows forward in his quest to join what’s left of the Round Table. He’s pinned all his hopes to the idea of Camelot, the idea that he can be a hero amongst this glorious brotherhood of legendary knights.
Yet the heroes of this book are largely broken, bitter men. Each knight in the story’s rather large ensemble gets their own tale in the form of a few flashback chapters, offering a tantalizing glimpse at how their past with Arthur shaped their hopes for England’s future.
However, most of the characters get little development beyond their brief backstories, so few of the knights stand out as truly compelling or memorable characters. The most interesting member of the court of Camelot is Nimue, a formidable enchantress and one-time apprentice to Merlin, who doesn’t provide the most glowing reviews of her former mentor.
In Grossman’s England, dueling factions vie not just for the kingdom’s throne but also its very identity: is this the ancient, pagan Britain, filled with fairy magic, or a Christian Britain, loyal to just one God? This battle for the soul of a nation is a powerful theme, but Grossman at times gets too dragged down with clunky monologues as characters brood over weighty questions of God, politics and destiny.
The most thrilling scenes are those where characters step into action. Grossman’s strength is his deep attention to the details in battle scenes, where every blow or parry illuminates a character’s psychology.
The mixture of boldness and desperation that Collum throws into any duel shows that he’s fighting not just to beat his opponent, but to prove that the identity he’s stolen is real. If he can prove himself a hero, the suffering of his childhood will have some meaning.
The quest to find a new king is also about creating meaning. A nation needs a founding story, some idea that unifies the people — even if that story is fiction.
Elevating politics to an ideal, however, also brings its dangers. As one mysterious spirit warns: “One day you will see that it is a mistake to love an empire, or a throne, or a crown, because those things cannot love. They can only die.”
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