Lancelot

Some of us grew up with T H White’s Once and Future King as our touchstone for authenticity in the Arthurian myths; others found that Rosemary Sutcliff, Bernard Cornwell or Mary Stewart filled that role. Giles Kristian pulls together the best of the best and infuses it with his own utterly transformative understanding of myth, magic – and the many faces of love . . . There are so many modern retellings of the Arthurian myth, but this one stands head and shoulders above the rest, in the company of true greatness.

MANDA SCOTT, author of Boudica

His Lancelot is no airy tale of magic and romance, but a muscular telling of warriors and survival, beautifully rendered in a prose that is both visceral and lyrical. This is historical fiction at its very best.

ELIZABETH FREMANTLE, author of The Girl in the Glass Tower

Giles Kristian’s brilliant take on the Arthurian love-triangle is impressively fresh and original . . . the language is arrestingly beautiful, poetic and poignant; the fights are satisfyingly bloody; the background is a believably muddy, pagan and benighted post-Roman Britain, against which Giles unfolds a tender and tragic love story. We know it will end badly, but reading this enchanting and elegiac novel, you can’t help rooting for Lancelot and his love and hoping it will all work out somehow by the final page.

ANGUS DONALD, author of Outlaw

Kristian is one of the finest storytellers in the genre . . . this is a novel that you feel as much as you read. What we end up with is utterly staggering . . . Giles has surpassed the Cornwell trilogy in a single title.

ROBIN CARTER, Parmenion Books

Kristian is a writer with rare power to grab you at the opening of the story and to keep the pace going. Lancelot is a powerful reworking of the King Arthur myths. The pages turn by themselves.

JUSTIN HILL, author of Viking Fire

This most fascinating character from Arthurian legend has been plucked from the 14th-century romances and positioned firmly back in the early medieval environment he belongs in. Giles is an extraordinary writer, able to capture sounds, smells, sensations in a sentence. No other writer thinks and feels his way back to the medieval past the way he does . . . Lancelot is an exceptional book and does what only great historical fiction can do: transport you back through time to feast, fight and feel alongside fascinating characters from the past. No one does this better than Giles Kristian.

DR JANINA RAMIREZ

Authentic, epic, and wonderfully Arthurian.

CHRISTIAN CAMERON, author of The Ill-Made Knight

I loved the post Roman chaos of Giles’ vision, just as I imagine it would have been but with the life of that vision breathed into it to render it in stark and bloody tones. But what I enjoyed most was the sheer glorious brutality of the age, delivered by a writer with the heart of a warrior and the soul of a poet. It’s really, really good.

ANTHONY RICHES, author of The Centurions series

It is a masterpiece in the true sense of the word.

CONN IGGULDEN, author of The Falcon of Sparta

Without doubt this is Giles Kristian’s finest novel to date. Glorious. Tragic. Lyrical. Totally gripping. I loved it.

BEN KANE, author of Clash of Empires

A gorgeous, rich retelling of the Arthurian tale.

Antonia Senior, THE TIMES

Truly magical . . . reads with the authority and gravitas of Manda Scott's Boudica books, such that I found it utterly believable throughout . . . it was a stroke of genius to retell this legend through Lancelot's POV, the betrayer rather than the betrayed.

ANNA STEPHENS, author of Godblind

It’s difficult to think of any author more gifted to retell Lancelot’s story than Giles Kristian . . . [he] writes so beautifully. He brings these post-Roman years so vividly to life. I love the way in which the recent Roman past haunts this landscape. There is myth here, there is the Druid Merlin, and we’re reminded of many of the famous Arthurian legends, such as Excalibur, but Giles Kristian evokes a time rooted in history and in the land around us even now . . . his writing comes closest to the feeling, mood and beauty of the Old and Middle English verse that I love so much . . . there is power here, deep expression and enormous feeling. I cried and cried as the story ended in the only way it could.

KATE ATHERTON, For Winter Nights

Fiercely beautiful and gripping.

ANNA SMITH-SPARK, author of The Court of Broken Knives

Intense and powerful . . . written with deep expression and enormous feeling. It is a marvellous historical adventure.

Sunday Express

My impression as I was reading Lancelot was of a flare being held up in the gloom of this peculiarly dark passage of history. Every detail illuminated, every motive believable, every heart laid bare. A bright intensity but passing away, guttering, about to go out. And, by the time his tale comes to its conclusion, that seems to be his point. A gentle lament at the onrushing of a dark and inexorable tide which comes to extinguish a bright and golden age of Britain forever. Lancelot is a gem of a book. If there were six stars, it could have them all. Or, to use the words of Spinal Tap, "This one goes to eleven." Loved it.

THEODORE BRUN, author of The Wanderer Chronicles

This is a story that is packed full of imagery and meaning. Kristian’s prose is unique – stunningly beautiful without ever feeling overdone . . . a wonderfully textured story from a perspective I had never encountered before. Truly masterful storytelling.

FANTASY HIVE