Death of Kings

Saxon Tales, Book 6

By: Bernard Cornwell

Narrated by: Stephen Perring

The sixth installment of Bernard Cornwell’s bestselling series chronicling the epic saga of the making of England, “like Game of Thrones, but real” (The Observer, London)—the basis for The Last Kingdom, the hit BBC America television series.

As the ninth century wanes, England is perched once more on the brink of chaos. King Alfred is dying; with his passing, the island of Britain seems doomed to renewed warfare. Alfred wants his son Edward to succeed him, but there are other Saxon claimants to the throne—as well as ambitious pagan Vikings to the north.

With the promise of battle looming again, Uhtred, the Viking-raised but Saxon-born warrior, whose life seems to shadow the making of England itself, is torn between competing loyalties. Uhtred’s loyalty, and his vows, are to Alfred—not to his son—and despite long years of service to the old king, Uhtred is still reluctant to commit to Alfred’s cause. His own desire is to reclaim his long lost ancestral lands and castle to the north. As the king’s warrior he is duty-bound, but the king’s reign is nearing its end, and his death will leave a vacuum of power. Uhtred is forced to make a momentous choice: either take up arms—and Alfred’s mantle—to realize his dream of a united and Christian England, or be responsible for condemning it to oblivion.

Death of Kings is a harrowing story of the power of tribal commitment and the dilemma of divided loyalties. This is the making of England magnificently brought to life by “the best historical novelist writing today” (Vince Flynn).

Great book: narrator can't pronounce anything

The story is great as always from this series. The narrator on the other hand cannot pronounce anything correctly. Anything. At all.

Poor narrator

The usual good story from Bernard Cornwell. Did not enjoy the narrators performance at all. You would think that if you were going to read the
6th(?) book in a series you would at least see how the main characters name and title had been consistently pronounced in the first five books instead of making up your own pronunciation. It was was terribly distracting through out the entire performance. Good story/Poor narrator.

Hope you don't mind the names pronounced different

In the first five books, the first three voice actors all pronounce the names the same. In this book the fourth guy decided to pronounce the names completely different. I found it extremely irritating.

another book another narrator

This is the 4th narrator for this series. he couldn't take the time to learn the proper name pronunciations.

Good addition to the series.

I was wary of this one based on other reviews, but I enjoyed the narrator quite a lot and found the story enjoyable. It was nice to see Uhtred just be a warrior instead of having a bunch of messy romance muddling things up.