The Last Kingdom (Saxon Stories #1) - Bernard Cornwell

What a delicious feeling it is to start a new series and thoroughly enjoy the first book. I recently took a long car trip and The Last Kingdom was my companion for ten hours of riveting driving through southern Illinois. The series begins with Otrid (I listened to this so be prepared for some completely inaccurate spellings) in Northumbria. He marches to war at 10 years old with his father and sees his father and most of the Northumbrian army slaughtered by the invading Danes. He's taken captive by a Dane named Ragnar and grows up learning to fight.

As the Danes move to take Mercia and East Agnlia, Ostrid is introduced to real battle and becomes torn between his love for Ragnar and the Danish way of life, and to his fealty to his homeland of England. When the Danes move to take Wessex, the last kingdom free from Danish rule, they are met by an unlikely English champion in the pious King Alfred. 

The book is just really really well done and I have to give special props to the voice narrator for his inflections and changes between accents. Listening to this was really delightful. Cornwell was lucky in that not many source documents exist from this period of time to draw his facts from so he had a lot of room to invent and imagine, but he still kept everything in the realm of reality. 

I was sad that I couldn't immediately start the next book in the series. I can't wait for it to show back up off my hold list at the library.

4/5 Stars.