Highly recommend these books for any young reader!

Smith and Bernard make Egyptology fascinating and acessible to both the younger and more adult readers. I highly recommend this book to both the avid fans of tombs and mummies and novices who are just being introduced to Egypt and its wonders.

Bernard Cornwell's interpretation of the Arthurian legend, "The Warlord Chronicles" begun with "The Winter King" and followed by "Enemy of God" and "Excalibur" is, in my opinion, the best so far. The Chronicles take the form of a reflection written by Derfal, one of Arthur's warriors, in old age retired to a monastery. Derfal delights in working behind his abbot's back (he was an old enemy), but he has the protection of his Queen, desperate for a good story. During his time with Arthur, Derfal rose through the ranks to become a brave and loyal commander and a trusted confidant. His position allowed him unique insight into the character of Arthur and all the other figures prominent in the legend. His personal journey leads to love and eventual marriage to a high borne woman, the joy and despair of fatherhood, finding his true ancestry and conversion from paganism to the fledgling Christianity.

Most people are familiar in some way with the bones of the Arthurian legend, so I'm not going to tell you anything about the plot. Without deviating too far from the accepted story, in this retelling, Cornwell gives the legend substance. What makes it stand apart is the way he fleshes out the characters so they take on a reality other writers can only dream of (Nimue is particularly good). Cornwell's writing flows so effortlessly, and you quickly become engrossed by the people, the places and the strategy. You can smell the fires, taste the food and wine, feel the harsh winter cold, hear the terrified screams of women and children and see the battles unfold before you. I never thought I would enjoy reading battle scenes, but these (and there are many) are so well written, I didn't skip a word. The motivations of characters, explained by the often cruel and harsh lives they endured, become real. Life was just one huge struggle, no matter where and to whom you were born.

"The Warlord Chronicles", which should be read in sequence, is a must for all fans of the Arthurian legend, but anyone who enjoys a well-written story of high adventure will find much to appreciate here.

This book completes the three book series, the Warlord Chronicles, by Bernard Cornwell. The stories are narrated by Derfel, a Christian monk, recalling the Arthurian legend, in which he was a participant.

If this is your introduction to this series, you would be well advised to begin with 'The Winter King.'

Among other things, this is a story of the conflict between a fledgling Christianity in Britain, and the old religion, whose priests were the Druids. It is also the author's version of the legend of King Arthur.

Bernard Cornwell has studied his subject, like Jack White, Mary Stewart and John Steinbeck. It amazes me how these people's fertile imaginations have ended with such different stories, given the same basic, if sparse, research facts.

It was a real pleasure to read Cornwell's novels in this series, and I'm sorry to see the end. Of course, he's written a couple of dozen other books, including the entire series of Sharpe's adventures, so all is not lost.

Joseph Pierre,
Author of THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS: Our Journey Through Eternity

The narrator of this book, like its prequels, is Derfel Cadarn, a warrior in Arthur's service, who is oath-sworn to uphold Mordred's throne, but who finds that his duties often conflict with his sense of right and justice. Cornwell's novel eschews romantic notions of the Dark Ages and instead gives details about daily life that are far from pleasant, e.g., the constant "de-lousing" process. However, far from being a Tolstoy-esque recanting of minute details, this novel outpaces its predecessors with a whirlwind of battle scenes and a breathtaking account of shifting loyalties, ruthless leaders and timeless passions.

To anyone serious about the Arthurian legend, this is a must-read!

Cornwell's recreation of Dark Ages Britain is wonderful, complete with many facets of utter barbarity, religious strife, ethnic diversity, politics and war. Some of his best passages here are the "battles" between opposing magicians and shamans (we can never be sure if the magic is real, but the characters certainly believe in it). With Arthur and Aelle talking high politics, a witch and two shamans are having a private war; spitting, hopping on one foot, piling stones in significant patterns. It's great stuff.

Derfel is an attractive everyman sort of character, a powerful warrior but a bit of a romantic. Other characters are quite strong as well--in fact Cornwell, who doesn't always do well with villains, women and secondary characters, outdoes himself here.

Setting is heavily described, so much so that I found the plot to drag just a bit here and there. Still, plenty happens, and the exciting and believably authentic battle scenes should please most readers--especially since this was why we would read a Cornwell Arthur story in the first place! But even the battles aside, this is a good book and more elegantly written than I would have expected.

The action is furious and vivid, the characters are complex and inglamorous. This is hard reality and much closer to how the story of King Arthur would have happened. The research into the clash of Christian and pagan beliefs is enlightening too.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the dark ages, King Arthur or good historical stories.

This is a fabulous book - as are the other two. Cornwell obviously just gets better and better. If you haven't read any of his many books, this is a great place to start. I highy recommend it.

These changes make Arthur so much more believible. I personally, as a Medieval studies Major, believe in Arthur, but we have to understand what he was like without the stories we all grew up on. Cornwell has done just that. The most real Arthur and companions you will ever read about.

In Enemy of God, we learn more about the middle of the legends we all know. Arthur still prepairs the throne for the to be king Mordred, while Merlin and Nimue search for the Gold Cauldren in British history. Throughout the story we find new twists to old legends in believable situations and by the end of this second book we are just waiting for the third to pick up.

Kudos for Cornwell. This is a wonderful book. A must have for any fan of Arthur.

Nothing and no one intimidates Macbeth. He murders all who oppose him, including Banquo, who had been a close friend. But the witches predict doom, for Macbeth, there will be no heirs and his authority over Scotland will come to an end. Slowly as the play progresses, we discover that Macbeth's time is running up. True to the classic stylings of Shakespeare tragedy, Lady Macbeth goes insane, sleepwalking at night and ranting about bloodstained hands. For Macbeth, the honor of being a king comes with a price for his murder. He sees Banquo's ghost at a dinner and breaks down in hysteria in front of his guests, he associates with three witches who broil "eye of newt and tongue of worm", and who conjure ghotsly images among them of a bloody child. Macbeth is Shakespeare's darkest drama, tinged with foreboding, mystery and Gothic suspense. But, nevertheless, it is full of great lines, among them the soliloquy of Macbeth, "Out, out, brief candle" in which he contemplates the brevity of human life, confronting his own mortality. Macbeth has been made into films, the most striking being Roman Polansky's horrific, gruesome, R-rated movie in which Lady Macbeth sleepwalks in the nude and the three witches are dried-up, grey-haired naked women, and Macbeth's head is devilishly beheaded and stuck at the end of a pole. But even more striking in the film is that at the end, the victor, Malcolm, who has defeated Macbeth, sees the witches for advise. This says something: the cycle of murder and violenc will begin again, which is what Macbeth's grim drama seems to be saying about powerhungry men who stop at nothing to get what they want.

The plot does not seem to move along as well as Shakespeare's other most popular dramas, but I believe this is a result of the writer's intense focus on the human heart rather than the secondary activity that surrounds the related royal events. It is fascinating if sometimes rather disjointed reading. One problem I had with this play in particular was one of keeping up with each of the many characters that appear in the tale; the English of Shakespeare's time makes it difficult for me to form lasting impressions of the secondary characters, of whom there are many. Overall, though, Macbeth has just about everything a great drama needs: evil deeds, betrayal, murder, fighting, ghosts, omens, cowardice, heroism, love, and, as a delightful bonus, mysterious witches. Very many of Shakespeare's more famous quotes are also to be found in these pages, making it an important cultural resource for literary types. The play doesn't grab your attention and absorb you into its world the way Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet does, but this voyage deep into the heart of evil, jealousy, selfishness, and pride forces you to consider the state of your own deep-seated wishes and dreams, and for that reason there are as many interpretations of the essence of the tragedy as there are readers of this Shakespearean masterpiece. No man's fall can rival that of Macbeth's, and there is a great object lesson to be found in this drama. You cannot analyze Macbeth without analyzing yourself to some degree, and that goes a long way toward accounting for the Tragedy of Macbeth's literary importance and longevity.

Then there's the fact that Shakespeare essentially uses the action of the play as a springboard for an examination of madness. The play was written during the period when Shakespeare was experimenting with obscure meanings anyway; add in the demented babble of several of the central characters, including Lear, and you've got a drama whose language is just about impossible to follow. Plus you've got seemingly random occurrences like the disappearance of the Fool and Edgar's pretending to help his father commit suicide. I am as enamored of the Bard as anyone, but it's just too much work for an author to ask of his audience trying to figure out what the heck they are all saying and what their actions are supposed to convey. So I long ago gave up trying to decipher the whole thing and I simply group it with the series of non-tragic tragedies (along with MacBeth, Hamlet, Julius Caesar), which I think taken together can be considered to make a unified political statement about the importance of the regular transfer of power in a state. Think about it for a moment; there's no real tragedy in what happens to Caesar, MacBeth, Hamlet or Lear; they've all proven themselves unfit for rule. Nor are the fates of those who usurp power from Caesar, Hamlet and Lear at all tragic, with the possible exception of Brutus, they pretty much get what they have coming to them. Instead, the real tragedy lies in the bloody chain of events that each illegitimate claiming of power unleashes. The implied message of these works, when considered as a unified whole, is that deviance from the orderly transfer of power leads to disaster for all concerned. (Of particular significance to this analysis in regards to King Lear is the fact that it was written in 1605, the year of the Gunpowder Plot.)

In fact, looking at Lear from this perspective offers some potential insight into several aspects of the play that have always bothered me. For instance, take the rapidity with which Lear slides into insanity. This transition has never made much sense to me. But now suppose that Lear is insane before the action of the play begins and that the clearest expression of his loss of reason is his decision to shatter his own kingdom. Seen in this light, there is no precipitous decline into madness; the very act of splitting up the central authority of his throne, of transferring power improperly, is shown to be a sign of craziness.

Next, consider the significance of Edgar's pretense of insanity and of Lear's genuine dementia. What is the possible meaning of their wanderings and their reduction to the status of common fools, stripped of luxury and station? And what does it tell us that it is after they are so reduced that Lear's reason (i.e. his fitness to rule) is restored and that Edgar ultimately takes the throne. It is probably too much to impute this meaning to Shakespeare, but the text will certainly bear the interpretation that they are made fit to rule by gaining an understanding of the lives of common folk. This is too democratic a reading for the time, but I like it, and it is emblematic of Shakespeare's genius that his plays will withstand even such idiosyncratic interpretations.

To me, the real saving grace of the play lies not in the portrayal of the fathers, Lear and Gloucester, nor of the daughters, but rather in that of the sons. First, Edmund, who ranks with Richard III and Iago in sheer joyous malevolence. Second, Edgar, whose ultimate ascent to the throne makes all that has gone before worthwhile. He strikes me as one of the truly heroic characters in all of Shakespeare, as exemplified by his loyalty to his father and to the King. I've said I don't consider the play to be particularly tragic; in good part this is because it seems the nation is better off with Edgar on the throne than with Lear or one of his vile daughters.

Even a disappointing, and often bewildering, tragedy by Shakespeare is better than the best of many other authors (though I'd not say the same of his comedies.) So of course I recommend it, but I don't think as highly of it as do many of the critics.

GRADE : B-

Of course, it's all in the writing. Shakespeare has this genius to come up with magnificent, superb sentences as well as wise utterings even if the plot is not that good.

This is the case with Lear. I would read it again only to recreate the pleasure of simply reading it, but quite frankly the story is very strange. It is hard to call it a tragedy when you foolishly bring it about on yourself. Here, Lear stupidly and unnecessarily divides his kingdom among his three daughters, at least two of them spectacularly treacherous and mean, and then behaves exactly in the way that will make them mad and give them an excuse to dispose of him. What follows is, of course, a mess, with people showing their worst, except for poor Edgar, who suffers a lot while being innocent.

Don't get me wrong: the play is excellent and the literary quality of Shakespeare is well beyond praise. If you have never read him, do it and you'll see that people do not praise him only because everybody else does, but because he was truly good.

The plot is well known: Lear divides the kingdom, then puts up a stupid contest to see which one of his daughters expresses more love for him, and when Cordelia refuses to play the game, a set of horrible treasons and violent acts begins, until in the end bad guys die and good guys get some prize, at a terrible cost.

As a reading experience, it's one of the strongest you may find, and the plot is just an excuse for great writing.

The New Folger Library edition has to be among the best representations of Shakespeare I've seen. The text is printed as it should be on the right page of each two-page set, while footnotes, translations, and explanations are on the left page. Also, many drawings and illustrations from other period books help the reader to understand exactly what is meant with each word and hidden between each line.