10. Sword Song

by Bernard Cornwell
Rated: 4 1/2 Stars

Once more into another exciting breach, and this time, Uhtred has to defend the ancient and decayed Roman city of London against the rampaging Vikings, who aim to conquer England and enslave the native Saxons. Like the others before it's filled with bloodletting, battles, political schemes, and just a little romance. Ethelflaed, the daughter of Alfred is introduced as a character in this book and I am hoping that she will become a player in books to come. She had an interesting roll to play in the history of Mercia and I am taking this as a sign that Cornwell intends to explore it.

This book should have been an easy 5 star plus but Cornwell's portrayal of Alfred really annoys me. I am usually a pretty easy going reader and am not one to insist on total historical accuracy in a book of fiction. As long as the author keeps it somewhat plausible I am willing to go down almost any road. But to my mind, the man Cornwell is calling Alfred the Great comes off the pages as Alfred the Weak and Stupid. And once an author looses credibility with me if affects my enjoyment of a story as a whole. I feel like I am no longer reading Historical Fiction but have been pushed over into the Fantasy genre. It's like being invited out to eat hamburgers and being served hot dogs instead. Nothing wrong with hot dogs, it just wasn't what I was expecting.

9. Touchstone

In England in 1926, New Yorker Harris Stuyvesant is tracking the bomber who blew up his sweetheart and permanently injured his brother. A sinister operative leads him to Bennett Grey, whose injuries in World War I make him terrifyingly sensitive to every movement and gesture and who has hidden himself in Cornwall. These three, Grey's former lover Lady Laura Hurleigh, and his sister, Sarah, form the points of an intricate star drawn around the old families and the coming general strike, the legacy of the war, and the desperation of poverty and class struggle. King works her mastery not only in a vivid and sometimes terrifying psychological study but also through gorgeous evocation of the English landscape, detailed description of the dynamics in a country house inhabited by the same family for half a millennium, and perceptive analysis of the intricate complexities of politics, power and gender, and social justice. Cinematic in the intensity of its shifting points of view and boasting characters so charismatic that we can hear not only their voices but also the sound of their breathing,