War of the Wolf by Bernard Cornwell

War of the Wolf (2018) is the eleventh book in Bernard Cornwell’s THE SAXON STORIES series, which was adapted into The Last Kingdom, on Netflix. It’s easy to see why the series was optioned for a visual adaptation — Cornwell’s prose neatly balances battle scenes and moments when plots are quietly hammered out, and his faithfulness to his faithfulness to 9th and 10th century Britain is admirable without becoming slavish, allowing his room to invent his own characters or scenarios and fold them into established historical precedent.

Not having read any of the preceding books in the series, I was at a disadvantage when it came to jumping into Uhtred of Bebbanburg’s life; Cornwell doesn’t spend much time with exposition or info-dumps, and there ... Read More

Agincourt by Bernard Cornwell

[In our Edge of the Universe column, we review mainstream authors that incorporate elements of speculative fiction into their “literary” work. However you want to label them, we hope you’ll enjoy discussing these books with us.]


Often there is a fine line between historical fiction and fantasy. In the case of Agincourt by Bernard Cornwell, the line is especially blurry. Of course, there is no magic or elves or dragons. That’s not to say that things are completely mundane, but there is that very important distinction.

Agincourt is set in the time of Henry V and Bernard Cornwell paints a vividly bleak picture of the conditions that people lived in back then; It's dirty, people are o... Read More