The Last Kingdom. Bernard Cornwell

Wansworth

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Absolute rubbish,badly written. Obviously thought he. had a good idea but didn’t know how to handle it,beware of books with maps with stange names and a glossary of characters in some made up language? Beware of books with embossed lettering on cover
 

Aeolus

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Each to their own opinion. I enjoyed reading that book and the rest of the series. The books cover a relatively little-known period of history, the story is fast-moving and interesting, the characters are, admittedly, a bit thin. The place names and languages mentioned by the OP are, I understand, Roman, Viking and Saxon names and words based on research into the limited available documents from the period. So there is some guesswork but a reasonable probability that many of them are correct (or close).

Many of the locations in the books are easily identifiable - I find it fascinating that Hayling Island (Heilincigae in the books) was the site of a major battle between the Saxons and the Vikings in 875. I now see those longships drawn up on the shore (in my mind's eye) everytime I sail past.

I would recommend the whole series.
 

Slowtack

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Very enjoyable books imho.............and with enough historical content for the purpose of anchoring the story .........I am currently reading Rory Stewart's "The Marches" dealing with the Scotland/England borderlands and its history from Roman times........not exactly a thrilling account but an interesting tale of lost local Scottish, Cumbrian and Northumbrian kingdoms, with their own cultures and languages , and the various colonial garrisons on Hadrians wall from various parts of the wider Roman empire over a 250-300 year period.
 

Slowboat35

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Interesting, an accusation of "badly written" in a post that does not contain a single capital letter, only one comprehensible punctuation mark and even includes a child's cartoon picture.
Let alone a description of The Lord of The Rings as another such example!

This brand of erudite critics amuses me...
 

Wansworth

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Interesting, an accusation of "badly written" in a post that does not contain a single capital letter, only one comprehensible punctuation mark and even includes a child's cartoon picture.
Let alone a description of The Lord of The Rings as another such example!

This brand of erudite critics amuses me...
Yes it does,three????????Reading the sequel the Pale Horseman,equally lacking in characters de elopement and the plot revolves round the nasty Danes raping and pillaging ad nauseum
 

Slowboat35

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Sadly, SW 18 your response made no sense to me at all but then I only speak English. However I understand Marvel comics are fun for a certain level of readership too. Apparently they too contain lots of childish cartoons that reinforce the simple text for those that need the help...
 

Bru

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Absolute rubbish,badly written. Obviously thought he. had a good idea but didn’t know how to handle it,beware of books with maps with stange names and a glossary of characters in some made up language? Beware of books with embossed lettering on cover

One of my favourite books by one of my favourite (extremely popular and successful) authors!

It's not a made up language, it's Old English (which, as an aside, whilst being the root of modern English bears only a passing resemblance to it) and occasionally a smattering of Old Norse

The "strange" place names are genuine, they are what those places were called in Saxon times (from various historical sources such as the Anglo Saxon Chronicle)

The series is, in broad terms at least, fairly historically accurate. A certain amount of artistic license is taken here and there (as the author details in the addendum) and of course much of the detail is fictional but as historical novelists go, Cornwell takes relatively few liberties with known historical fact and as far as possible weaves his stories around the facts rather than bending the facts to fit the story

He is one of the most successful authors of all time, and probably the most successful in his genre.
 

Wansworth

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One of my favourite books by one of my favourite (extremely popular and successful) authors!

It's not a made up language, it's Old English (which, as an aside, whilst being the root of modern English bears only a passing resemblance to it) and occasionally a smattering of Old Norse

The "strange" place names are genuine, they are what those places were called in Saxon times (from various historical sources such as the Anglo Saxon Chronicle)

The series is, in broad terms at least, fairly historically accurate. A certain amount of artistic license is taken here and there (as the author details in the addendum) and of course much of the detail is fictional but as historical novelists go, Cornwell takes relatively few liberties with known historical fact and as far as possible weaves his stories around the facts rather than bending the facts to fit the story

He is one of the most successful authors of all time, and probably the most successful in his genre.
I accept your observations but I maintain at least for the writing was a bit lame and the characters not well developed.Living inSpain I have limited access to English novels and I don’t know how they arrived on the bookshelf and have to admit I am not a great one for historical novels
 
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