“The Warlord Chronicles” by Bernard Cornwell is a retelling of the King Arthur saga consisting of the three books “The Winter King”, “Enemy of God” and “Excalibur”.

Cornwell’s version is — in contrast to other retellings being full of magic — more down to earth. A priestess belatedly realizes that she needs to act as if she’s in a trance to make her prophecies believable. And a girl is painted with some phosphorous stuff to convince people that she is a ghost. There are some convenient coincidences and especially in the last book also some magic like when clay figures are pierced to cause illness and pain in some remote persons. But generally people like Merlin are some early kind of scientists wandering around in the search of knowledge and producing effects that look like magic.

Arthur, who is a war strategist and not a king, lives in a Britain abandoned by the Romans. The old Druidic religion competes with some imported Roman gods and with the spreading Christian religion. The Britons don’t understand the cities, armor and other stuff left behind by the Romans, but they use it and revere it as something from another world. And they fight. The British kingdoms fight each other and the invading Saxons.

Many protagonists known from other retellings of the saga are also present in Cornwell’s version, but they have slightly different personalities. Like Lancelot who is a treacherous scheming coward.

I liked the sober look at magic and mysticism. And while informing me about that particular era in Britain around 500 A.C., the story kept me entertained and invested.