Arthur has won the crown, but not the country.
Now fifteen, Arthur has been crowned king, but not everyone likes it. His first task is to defeat the armies of the fearsome kings rising against him, who refuse to hand rule of the country over to a teenage boy. He has an ever-growing stable of loyal knights on his side, as well as the magic of the powerful wizard Merlin, but will it be enough to defeat armies twenty times the size of his own?
“You really feel like you know Arthur as a person—and you really like him too.”
—Serenamia21, Amazon Review
More insidious may be the forces that chip away at his mind. People he loves are injured or killed in his service. His youth and innocence drain away in the endless grind of carrying the throne. And then there is Merlin, offering power he cannot rule without, yet controlling and belittling, manipulating while empowering. And Arthur, he is increasingly aware, never asked for any of it.
Could he walk away? Does he even have the choice?
“I have never related so much with Arthur’s character until now…. This Arthur is much more relatable than other versions, because in this one he is a human person, who was his own flaws.”
—Mariana, Amazon Review
An excellent place to join the series, this novel brings to vivid life the events covered in Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur chapter one, while weaving back in storylines Malory left out of his shortened telling. With a psychological realism uncommon in Arthurian fiction, you will not only be there through King Arthur’s first major battles, his first meeting with Guinevere and the moment he learns who his birth parents were, you will feel what each event means to him and the ever-expanding group of unforgettable characters who surround him.
“This has everything that the original legends needed without altering them. You’ll understand how these stories survived to inspire generations for as long as they have through this book series!”
—Amory, Amazon Review
While new readers can pick up this novel with a minimum of confusion, readers who have followed the series will know the complex histories of each of these characters and fully comprehend the resonance of their tales as their storylines converge and all existing characters come together for the first time, their fates forever intertwining as the story of King Arthur’s reign begins.
Completely faithful to the genuine Arthurian legends as laid down between the years of 1136 and 1485, The Swithen series retains the magic, mystery and resonant poetry of the medieval tales. This installment contains the first extended sequences of Arthurian mysticism, in which the real world bleeds into a heightened non-reality of resonance and meaning, and characters walk through dream worlds with irrevocable consequences for their own.
“[Telek’s] character development is strong… with a sense of maintaining the original story but humanizing the characters rather than making them historical bores. Seems that they are just pretty much normal, emotional humans wherein greatness may have come accidentally. I’ve read everything Arthurian that I can lay my hands on and this is certainly the best in years.”
—Scott T., Amazon Review
This novel also continues the series’ trademark psychological realism, digging under the heroic archetypes to reveal the humans within, with all of their fears, insecurities and emotional attachments. You will know King Arthur as a real person for the first time, as well as beloved characters like Merlin, Morgan le Fay and the Lady of the Lake.
Meet them here, as the reign of King Arthur begins—and comes very close to ending—in a novel that brings a world of distant, impenetrable literature to vivid, urgent life.