The Bright SwordA Novel of King Arthur
Lev Grossman picks up the Arthur legend at its lowest moment — the king dead, Camelot in ashes — and hands the salvage operation to the misfits. The Bright Sword is a melancholy, talky, often funny epic about second-string knights trying to rebuild a world that's already lost its meaning.
From the review
Most Arthur stories end at Camlann. This one starts there. By the time Collum, a young knight from the far north, reaches Camelot, Arthur is two weeks dead and the great names are mostly gone — fallen, scattered, or grieving in the rubble. What's left are the knights nobody wrote songs about: a Saracen who never quite belonged, a fool given a sword as a joke, a sorceress who betrayed her own master. Grossman's gamble is that these are the interesting ones, and he's right. There's real pleasure in watching the legend's footnotes step into the light and discover they have to carry the whole thing now.
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