The Last English King (Paperback)

He selects Walt, a Godwinson housecarl (bodyguard), as his protagonist who fails to die with his king at Hastings and, guilt-ridden, wanders the breadth of Europe seeking to find himself. Along the way, he meets a defrocked monk who communicates in anachronistic psycho-jargon, an illusionist whose 11th-century repertoire would put David Copperfield to shame, and a wealthy, bewigged gem dealer whose intense interest in these transients is never fully explained. This wandering troupe is the audience to which Walt tells his story. Indeed, disconcertingly, an audience is all they ever become.

Rathbone chooses to employ a strictly modern vernacular which takes something away from the period setting. But, it is in Walt's recounting of events where this novel begins to find some merit. As with most historical novels, the reader can extract swaths of information about the life and times in which it is set. The Norman Conquest is a compelling story and even Rathbone's somewhat nonsensical premise cannot destroy it.

Still, The Last English King manages to conclude itself with a final nod toward mediocrity. Walt's tale finished, he abruptly bids adieu to his traveling companions in Asia Minor and hops aboard an adjacent ship loading for England. If readers haven't spotted the artifice of this traveling band of "ears" and the utter superfluousness of their trek, they will now and they will likely be disappointed.

I'd love to rate The Last English King higher because it's easy to see what it could have been. As it is, it is largely forgettable and, given the subject matter, this is a shame. 3 stars.

Walt, the ony survivor of King Harold's body guard, reaches on his migrations until small Asia. There he, who had lost his right hand at the battle of Hastings, tells his story till the end of the battle to his way companions . He describes the complicated relationships between the former scandinavian and anglo-saxon kings, as well as their connections to the normans. Beyond that the reader gets a view of social conditions of the time before William the conquerer, in which old traditions of legislation, administration were determining taxes and iurisdiction. The king had to succeed in relation to regional rulers and was dependent on their support in the Witan. Beside the noble ones and their attendants the national defense was incumbent on the duty of a people army of all free men (Fyrd). Some church dignitary did not take it too exactly with the canonical right and had wife and/or a loving. The feudalism of the invaders, which they along-brought from normandy, prepared, in the shoulder conclusion with the Roman church, an end for these conditions. A taut and centralistic leaning system suppressed from now on the in former times quite free population and it exploited with taxes and deliveries. The military affairs of the conquerers, which beside armored, noble riders (knights), who had already proven their superiority against the sign barrier from foot people at Hastings, based on the structure of strong castles whose sould lend those the norman England a singular impact force.

The open and honest epilog of the author puts aside the discussion more numerously speak and conceptual anachronisms. In modern Prosa the written, nevertheless as the one which can be designated historically, novel avails itself of a crude, sometimes brutal and vulgaeren language. The battles of Stamford Bridge (against the Norwegian king Harald Hardrada) and Hastings are described in drastic way in detail and are nothing for readers with tender mind. While the passages, which are concerned with events from anglo-saxon view interesting and informative are, work those from Walt's journey something fatiguing.

Additional visualization by a historical map and a family tree of the kings, would have amounted to to a better understanding and the novel revaluations to know. Summa summarum the novel is to be evaluated with three amazonstars.