Sit back by the fireplace, pour yourself a dark ale, and dive into this historical adventure. If you like sword and shield tales, this novel is highly recommended. I do believe that readers should finish the preceding books in the series before moving onto Sword Song. Cornwell is a skilled teller of tales and Sword Song does not disappoint. Jamie Glover does a very good job of performing the various accents of characters within the story, although at times I did find some of the accents and voices to be slightly irritating. This creates an extremely engaging story, and a perfect balance of narrative and historical information. This story, which occurs some five years after the events described in Lords of the North, tells how Alfred’s forces evict the Danes from London. Cornwell manages to weave the history into his narrative seamlessly, without forcing the reader to endure paragraphs of 'info dumping' which some historical fiction writers often do. Sword Song continues the story of Uhtred, the Saxon warrior who is a reluctant ally of Alfred the Great.

The central character of the series, Uhtred, being born to Saxon parents then kidnapped and raised by Danish Vikingr, is a fantastic vessel for the history behind the Danish occupation of England during the middle ages. Those eight years have seen a tentative peace settle between the countries of Wessex, East Anglia, and Mercia. Sword Song is the fourth book in the Saxon Stories series which is based in England in the AD 800s. Sword Song is the fourth in Cornwell's Saxon Tales series and it picks up the threads of Uhtred's life roughly eight years after the events of the last book. Bernard Cornwell is by far one of the best historical fiction writers on the planet.

Sword Song by Bernard Cornwell