![]() ![]() War Lord concerns the build up to the Battle of Brunanburh in 937AD, and of course the battle itself. Cornwell kept a few secrets up his sleeve. Cornwell’s strength as an author is building a world so realistic, and characters so real, that even armed with the knowledge we have, the suspense never really goes away.Īnd there are surprises in this last book too – a reconciliation and a tragedy in quick succession, swift and cruel and completely necessary. So in a very real way, we readers are like Uhtred’s men we know what is coming, but we are transfixed anyway. Since the very first novel, we have known that he would live to the close he is an old man from that first moment, narrating the story of his life. War Lord is the final triumphant book in the series and it isn’t a spoiler to say that Uhtred ends it sitting victorious in his beloved castle of Bebbanburg. But he could be talking about his own story too, a sly nod to the readers who have stuck with him for 13 volumes of The Last Kingdom series. ![]() The narrator of Bernard Cornwell’s War Lord, Uhtred of Bebbanburg, is talking here about his soldiers sitting around listening to a retelling of the Beowulf story, and still enjoying the tale despite knowing full well what the end will be. ![]() My men knew the story, yet they sat transfixed by its long telling, and there were tears when the end came. ![]()
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