“The Bright Sword” follows a young man named Collum from the outer reaches of the British isles who wants to join King Arthur’s Camelot as a Knight of the Round Table. Unfortunately, upon arrival he finds out that King Arthur is dead, as are all the other famous knights. All that’s left of the Round Table are the footnotes of Arthurian mythology: Sir Bevidere, Sir Constantine, Sir Pellinore, Sir Dagonet, Sir Dinadan, Nimue… and him.
I don’t know a lot about Arthurian mythology or Lev Grossman, but the premise of this immediately intrigued. What does happen after King Arthur dies and Camelot is left to its own devices? How do you move on from that golden age? I’m familiar with the big players, like Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, and Merlin and Morgana, but almost every knight named in this book drew a blank. However, the book feels perfectly open to someone like me; our protagonist, Collum, is an original character who may be familiar with the exploits of the famous knights, but he quickly finds out these are not reality so we can discover the truth together. Similarly, the setting, while full of magic and adventure, is heavily drawing upon real history to create what felt like historical fiction, which made it feel familiar even as it reveled in their magical adventures. For example, Collum and many other characters are Christians who spend much of the story praying for miracles from God and looking for holy relics, which is in direct opposition to the pagan beliefs of characters like Morgan le Fay. For another, the land is steeped in the past occupation by the Roman Empire and poor attitudes toward women by various bandits, kings, and mercenaries (including sexual assault and threatened sexual assault). There were plenty of details that, despite my own lack of knowledge on the subject, felt realistic and grounding, including loving but not exhaustive detail on the armor and sword stances.
However, unfortunately, what I found was that this story was not greater than the sum of its parts. Despite clear technical skill in the art of writing- supposedly Grossman wrote a trilogy before this, and that doesn’t surprise me- it always felt meandering, with characters wandering to and fro while things just happen to them. I can see that we’re supposed to be following and rooting for these characters’ internal journeys, I can feel that many of these random adventures are steeped in symbolism, but more and more often as the book went on I’d think to myself, so what was the point of that?
Meandering, Back-and-forth Aimlessness
For example: halfway through the story, when the main party had finally hit a friendlier equilibrium from their rough start, out of nowhere the knights attack Collum while cruelly sneering about the shameful secrets of his past he’d kept from them and dump him in a well inside a coffin. I hope that conveys exactly how jarring it felt to read. The writing style suddenly pulls back in point of view as it summarizes Collum’s new adventures after climbing out of the well: he becomes a knight at a new castle, faces many adversaries as the Knight of the Fountain, is defeated and kidnapped into a desert wasteland, saves a black lion which then becomes his companion for a time, becomes a mercenary, steals a sword from a dragon’s hoard underground, et cetera. It cannot be overstated how dreamlike this section felt, but it continued going on and on to the point I questioned myself and wondered if maybe it was real after all. Nope! At the end, he returns to the well where he confesses his dereliction of duty to the king he swore to swerve, promises to be faithful after all, and jumps back into the well wherein he wakes up surrounded by the knights to find out it was all a hazing ritual to become a real Knight of the Round Table. Okay. So what was the point of that? Turns out knights get a little boon from this ritual- Sir Pellinore never gets wet ever- and at the very end of the story we discover he can breathe underwater. It is useful for a single admittedly climactic moment, but then the story is at a close anyway so it’s a lot of work for little pay-off.
A big contributor to the feeling of meandering was the use of flashback chapters, each titled as The Story of Sir [Insert knight here]. Each chapter walked us through the backstory of one of the main party, including the sorceress Nimue, interspersed between events in the present day. In the beginning, it was very welcome as it helped explain the author’s take on the character and how they ended up where they are, usually at a fitting point where the quest they once went on or their past relationships were directly relevant and you wanted to know more about them. For example, the first flashback, Sir Bevidere’s, fleshes out his relationship with Arthur and critically establishes Arthur’s character for us early. However, as the story went on, it became more and more tedious and unwelcome, as I wanted to stay with their current and actually relevant quest. The first place I really noticed how uninterested I was was the arrival of The Story of Sir Dinadan.
Sir Dinadan was one of the least relevant knights in the party. The first time I took note of him was when the narration slyly noted how he never undressed to bathe with the rest of the knights in their travels. Immediately, I thought this was foreshadowing that he was a woman hiding his gender. This was not entirely accurate: we learn in his chapter he’s actually transgender. While I wish I could care about this revelation, the truth is Sir Dinadin was just a background knight filling space in the party up to this point, and this revelation, considering none of the characters even know or find out until the very end of the book, doesn’t make him any more relevant. In addition, this chapter was inserted after something completely irrelevant to Dinadin; Camelot fought off an invading band, and the end of the chapter happens to mention him and another knight chasing after stragglers. This was no place for a side story, when what I really wanted to know then was what they do next as they recover from casualties. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I skimmed a few pages and then entirely skipped this chapter, and I feel like nothing of value was lost. Dinadan continues to be a nothing character with no relationships or relevance after this anyways. Dinadan’s only purpose to my eye is to kill Merlin at the end, fulfilling the prophecy that only a man can kill Merlin in a progressive way (and frankly, this was such a trivial matter Grossman might as well have left Merlin under the hill where he was for the rest of the story and nothing would have changed).
The next flashback chapter was equally groan-inducing; The Story of Sir Scipio. But who is Scipio? you may ask. He’s another addition to the merry band early in their travels: not a Knight of the Round Table, exactly, but one in all but name. In addition to his late arrival to the band, he frankly barely talked and never said anything of substance when he did, so he felt to me as equally a background character to fill space as Sir Dinadan. I will acknowledge though that his chapter does come at a relevant time, unlike Sir Dinadan. He sacrifices himself by staying behind to fight off a devil from reaching the rest of the party, and somewhat shockingly starts shouting latin phrases and seemingly revealing himself to be a Roman legionnaire out of time. Given his lack of relevance and the fact he had already had a death fake-out pages before this new death, this again provoked a reaction of so why does this matter? I barely skimmed a page before completely skipping his chapter, and he never comes up again to my recollection.
Overall, these chapters ended up becoming tedious backstory dumps that completely distracted from the main story and worsened the already slow pacing of this nearly 700 page book. I would be remiss not to mention that the King Arthur flashbacks, however, were extremely welcome and always a pleasure to see. Despite being dead the whole story, he was easily the most intriguing character with the most three-dimensional portrayal, to the point that even knowing it wouldn’t happen I wished he was going to be brought back to life. My favorite outing of his was easily his flashback with Guinevere, which gave both characters their best outing and finally showed us what their relationship truly was in this world: a political marriage, maybe, but one with deep love, and in which Guinevere understood his inability to give her all of himself as king and as a self-hating man desperate always for God’s recognition. Guinevere, on the other hand, gets her very cool-blooded, intelligent portrayal finally fleshed out with the truth that she deeply loved Arthur and did her best to lift his burdens, to the point of declaring she chooses Arthur over God. I had already been desperately curious since the beginning of the story about what their relationship was like, and once I got a taste I found myself longing for more. This leads me to another weak point of the novel: the romance.
Weak Romance and Few Women
To a certain extent, it doesn’t feel fair to call it a “romance” when it takes up so little of the overall book. But it does involve the main character and one of the main party, so it isn’t insignificant either. Collum ends up falling for Nimue, the once-apprentice of Merlin and most prominent female character in the entire novel. (…That itself feels like a bit of a lie since I remember early on being distinctly disappointed they left her behind for the first quest or two, but she does join the traveling band eventually and become more prominent.) Their romance begins to be seeded halfway through the novel when during the aforementioned battle at Camelot, Collum remarks in narration how beautiful she looks casting powerful spells on the battlefield. This put me off personally, given before now there hadn’t been even a chance for any chemistry between them since they barely hung out, and because Nimue was characterized in her first appearance as being completely uninterested in him. I now understand that that choice was to make the growth of their relationship feel stronger, but that doesn’t work for me since it still felt rote and by the numbers. Collum just suddenly thinks she’s beautiful, and Nimue moves from disinterest and disliking his dishonesty and secrecy, to squeezing his shoulder in support one time, to kissing him, and then having sex with him in a fade-to-black soon before the book ends. I never felt like they had a rapport, so I never had any reason to care when they got together. I also felt it was part of a trend for female characters in this book.
There were 3 major female characters in this book: Nimue, Guinevere, and Morgan le Fay. Of those, two were in a romance with a man, and Morgan le Fay was the only one who didn’t undergo or nearly undergo a sexual assault (…to my recollection. I might’ve forgotten if it came up in her backstory). In fact, sexual assault was very prevalent in this book, including in our main character Collum’s backstory and as a threat to Sir Dinadan. The author obviously understands how it is bad, particularly in Nimue’s extensive backstory where his evil version of Merlin makes her his apprentice but in the end tries to drug and assault her (which is why she ended up putting him under a hill, as we learned very early in the book). But historically accurate or not, I don’t know or care, because what bothered me was how every female character and the trans man character are in danger of being assaulted practically all the time, and it got tiring. It’s nice to see that Nimue grows into her own power and protects herself, and that Dinadan is confident in his identity and stands strong against threats of assault, but I wish there could perhaps be other obstacles for the women and trans man to face.
Nimue, the only consistently present female character, is smart, sure of herself, and powerful, but once Collum gets an interest in her her main presence is either to progress her relationship with him another step or her assault-filled backstory chapter, which also centers around Merlin. That wouldn’t be so bad if Morgan felt like a real character: she’s also a sorceress, although more of a fey trickster type, who is smart, sure of herself, and powerful- hey, wait a second… Morgan’s appeal I think is supposed to be that you can’t tell whose side she’s on and you’re supposed to sympathize with her desire to bring the old pagan Britain back, but instead she came off as wishy-washy and a plot device. Why did she talk to Collum at the beginning and reveal that Camelot has already fallen? No reason, since she doesn’t seem to care about Collum specifically in any later scenes at all. Why did she let the main party get ensorcelled in the Otherworld when separated from Collum if she wanted to talk to them instead of Collum? Why did she give up on conquering the throne with her fairy army at the end? Because Lancelot got there first, maybe, but after that when Guinevere becomes queen she doesn’t seem to care anymore because she just flies the crew over to see the Saxon refugees flooding the isle and tell them the future so they can be prepared for it.
Guinevere fairs the best of the three, but only due to her great showing in her and Arthur’s flashback chapter. She’s not feisty and sassy or hot-tempered like the other two, but stands out as cool-headed, intelligent to the point of boredom, and calculated, which is tempered by her clear love and dedication to Arthur. Early in the story, she’s barely present except when she’s dismissed as a political marriage who doesn’t really care about Arthur and who Arthur didn’t really care about. Sure, this turns out to be unreliable narration, but why? What was the point? Guinevere fled after Arthur’s death to hide in a convent and when they stop by to ask her about succession, she denies them and says she’s just a nun now, until late in the book she seemingly briefly joined up with Morgan as she rides by on a fay white tiger, but then she uses a flying ship to save them from evil king Lancelot (which is stated directly that Morgan wouldn’t have done) and everything she said about dedicating herself to the convent was a lie and she wants to save Camelot now. I loved her getting to be queen again in the end, but it’s a little silly how much of the book would be cut out if she had just stepped up at the beginning of the novel. She didn’t have any on-page development so it’s not like it’d destroy her character arc, and you could even keep most of the novel anyway because the party can still be searching for a new successor while she’s on the throne- it even strengthens their arcs about accepting change and Arthur’s passing by having them denying the current monarch and trying to find a replacement Arthur. But as good as Guinevere is, she’s still a minor character in the novel as a whole, and historical or not, I find the presence of only 3 major female characters who are constantly under threat of sexual assault against a huge backdrop of men disappointing.
A Bland Ending
I’ll wrap up with the last disappointing piece of this book: the ending. After Collum performs a heroic deed and chooses to back up Guinevere as rightful ruler of Camelot, Morgan le Fay reveals to them that the Saxons will never stop coming because their home has been flooded and they have nowhere else to go. Because of fay magic, she knows that they will keep coming and cannot be stopped, so they have to accept now that they will be a part of Britain and that the future Britain will be much more diverse than the Christian Arthur’s Britain they all wanted. As I said before, Morgan’s character is confusing and I don’t really understand her motivations, but I do like the concept here and how it fits the main arc of the novel, that the characters need to accept there will be no more miracles, just hard work, and that change cannot be stopped. However, the ACTUAL final chapter of the novel is a very short glimpse into the future, where for some reason we’re told Dinadan becomes the oldest and last remaining knight of the Round Table and leaves Camelot far, far behind to grow old and die in a place that hasn’t even heard of it. It tries to end on a wham line:
He looked up at the empty clouds, and as he died he wondered, not for the first time but for the very last, why it should be that we are made for a bright world, but live in a dark one.
It felt like absolutely nothing. Again, Sir Dinadan had zero presence in this book. His only important moment is killing Merlin which also ‘proved’ he’s a real man to the disapproving world and Merlin because of the prophecy, but considering how impossibly difficult it was for Nimue to flee Merlin in her backstory chapter and lock him in the hill, Merlin went out with no trouble at all, and it felt like the author checking off a checklist of ‘things that need to happen at end of book.’ I don’t understand why we end on him of all people, especially considering COLLUM ISN’T MENTIONED AT ALL. That’s right, the main character of the book who they took the time to even get into a relationship at the very end, gets absolutely zero mention. We get some tidbits of other characters before the last short chapter I mentioned, and mostly Sir Dinadan, but nothing about Collum at all and it’s frankly mind-boggling. The last line, as I said, didn’t succeed as a wham line, and for me that’s because that was essentially their struggle the entire book. Their whole struggle was wanting a successor chosen by God, help and answers from God, holy relics from God, and they’re constantly upset about how He ignores them or lets them suffer for what they usually see as no purpose. So we know that they all wonder why they live in such an awful and difficult world when their reward is heaven, it isn’t a revelation or some beautiful sentiment or one that feels significant to Dinadan’s character. It’s such a random ending, and it really should’ve just ended after Morgan’s speech when the gang decide what kind of Camelot to fight for. Maybe even after the tidbits of Guinevere’s rule and Bevidere being her loyal guard, since it gives us a taste of the characters putting their growth into practice.
Conclusion
I’ll give “The Bright Sword” this: I was interested enough to finish the book, its prose is well-written, and it had a detailed but not overwhelming world. It depicts a King Arthur with great depth and complexity who I can easily understand why he commanded such love and respect. However, in the end, it’s much longer than it has any right to be, with unnecessary flashbacks and side characters, and it has barely any women in comparison to its huge cast of men. I believe you’d be better off finding a different Arthurian story: preferably one that’s much shorter.
P.S. If you have an interest in the premise of this book, the Arthurian legends retold including LGBTQ+ identities and with a focus on the world and politics, I’d actually recommend trying a little choice-based text game called Guenevere. You take the role of Guenevere on her wedding day, and make choices that shape her personality, interests, and her relationships with Arthur, Lancelot, and Morgana through the years, as well as the future of the country itself. Unfortunately, it has only two chapters, but what’s there is meaty and I found great fun replaying it many times trying out different Gueneveres. If that interests you, please give it a try!