Review: Arthur legend re-told.
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 11 2, 2013
I like my military history novels to have a fairly firm footing in actual history. This is a version of the legend of King Arthur and is pure fantasy; albeit barbaric and bloody. It is supposedly set during the late Roman occupation of Britain. Action, conflict sequences are suitably exiting, blood-thirsty, and graphically described; as are the crucifixions, castrations and divers other horrible tortures common in those times.The big negatives for me was the lack of historical accuracy, the mysticism and magic used by Arthur, or at least by his lady Guinevere, plus the ridiculous appearances of a escaped Disney white rat who seems to pop up whenever Arthur is in some sort of pivotal moment in his career; and what a career it was. He joins the legion and get promoted in preposterously rapid fashion through legionary, centurion, legate to king and usurper emperor in less time than most soldiers spend as a private.I also could make little or no differentiation between the big, powerful, brutal, cruel and savage-tempered Arthur and his opposing Roman doppelganger, the joint emperor Maximian. They are pretty much the same and, quite frankly, after a few chapters I really cared little which of them came out on top. A sure thing to make me lose interest in the book as a whole.The English in OK and hardly any typos appear, which is laudable in this type of Kindle offering. I think the author (certainly the reader)  would have been better served with smaller chapters, dedicated to one character at a time, rather than the ramblingly long chapters used here that moved from one piece of action by one character to another development from another; all with little explanation. I found this confusing.Bottom line, there are an awful lot of books out there for this genre and a lot of them are extremely good. This stands up rather badly to the competition.