What? A three star rating for a book involving my favorite boyfriend Uhtred? I know, I know. But hear me out. I know what this series is doing, where it's leading. And unfortunately to get from where it started to where it's going, Uhtred has to be like... 70 in this book. And he's fighting in a shield wall? I mean FFS. The man has swagger, but he should very well be dead by decades by now. But in Sword of Kings, here he is, just riding horses and fighting way way younger men.And there's an odd meandering to this book that the others didn't have. Uhtred doesn't seem to know what he's doing. And that, partly, is likely because no one really knows what happened in the 5-6 weeks during which this book is set. King Edward dies. But then so does Aelfweard. But no one knows how, and eventually Aethelstan is king. But again, those bare bones of dates and events are all that history has left us. So to put Uhtred into the action, he's sailing a ship up and down England, saving women.
And then some side things happen that felt, well just sad and unnecessary. So, yeah. The book is overlong for really only covering a few weeks of time and a lot of back and forth for Uhtred. Listen, the man has swagger, but has outlived the local life expectancy by 100% at this point. I am absolutely going to read the last book in the series and I have high hopes for the events of that one because I'm pretty sure I know what is going to happen, but Uhtred always figures out a way to keep things spicy, just a little bit of a miss in this one.
3/5 Stars.
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