Review: Sword Song

Sword Song by Bernard Cornwell

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



There are so many things to like about Mr. Cornwell's "Sword Song," but what stood out for me was (decidedly "pagan" and Thor devotee) Uthred's unlikely friendship with two priests: the fierce Welsh warrior Father Pyrlig and King Alfred's adviser and scholar Father Beocca.

Uhtred on choosing Father Pyrlig:
"On one side a kingdom, Viking friends and wealth, and on the other a Briton who was the priest of a religion that sucks joy from this world like dusk swallowing daylight. Yet I did not think. I chose, or fate chose, and I chose friendship. Pyrlig was my friend."

Uhtred on Father Beocca:
"He had a club foot, a squint, and a palsied left hand. He was blind in his wandering eye that had gone as white as his hair, for he was now nearly fifty years old. Children jeered at him in the streets and some folk made the sign of the cross, believing that ugliness was a mark of the devil, but he was as good a Christian as any I have ever known."

Funny repartees involving Uhtred and Beocca...
"Too many people were talking in the church!" Beocca complained. "This was a holy day, Uhtred, a sacred day, a celebration of the sacrament, and people were talking as if they were at market!"
"I was one of them," I (Uhtred) said.
"You were?" he asked, squinting up at me. "Well, you shouldn't have been talking. It's just plain bad manners! And insulting to God! I'm astonished at you, Uhtred, I really am! I'm astonished and disappointed."
"Yes, father," I said, smiling.

...and Uhtred and Pyrlig:
"But I've known Aethelflaed forever!" I exclaimed.
"He fears you know her only too well," Pyrlig said, "and it drives him to madness."
"But that's stupid!" I spoke angrily.
"It's jealousy," Pyrlig said, "and all jealousy is stupid."


More favorite passages from the book:

"It is strange what men talk about before battle. Anything except what faces them. I have stood in a shield wall, staring at an enemy bright with blades and dark with menace, and heard two of my men argue furiously about which tavern brewed the best ale. Fear hovers in the air like a cloud and we talk of nothing to pretend that the cloud is not there." —Uhtred, p.10

"You never, ever, tell others of your crimes, not unless they are so big as to be incapable of concealment, and then you describe them as policy or statecraft." —Uhtred, p.36

"Yet I was sworn to Alfred. I was sworn to defend Wessex. I had given Alfred my oath and without oaths we are no better than beasts." —Uhtred, p.55

"Cowardice is always with us, and bravery, the thing that provokes the poets to make songs about us, is merely the will to overcome the fear." —Uthred, p.136

"You live by obeying the rules. You make a reputation, boy, by breaking them." —Uhtred, p.149





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