Last Sword of Power - David Gemmell ****

I was first introduced to Gemmell last year through the Jerusalem man books, really enjoyed them and decided to try and read a few more of his novels. I dug into his catalogue and found that the Jerusalem books were written as a part of a larger series of books that primarily dealt with Sipstrassi stones – a powerful stone that has the ability to grant the person who holds it unimaginable power. Last sword of power is the sequel to The Ghost king, and although set a number years in the future we still find a number of the same characters with in the pages. This is one of those books where reading the series in order, although not totally necessary, would really help understand the plot as much of the action relates to previous events.

Gemmell has mixed his own brand of fantasy with both real life events and various ancient myths from a number of different sources. We find Arthurian legend side by side with Greek gods, Roman history intertwined with Gemmells own creations. The plot, as regular readers would expect, isn’t all that straight forward. There is a fairly large cast of characters for a book of just over 300 pages, and just to make things even more confusing a number of these have more than one name. But the gist of the novel is that the world is in turmoil, an evil ‘God’ is wreaking havoc on the earth and the only King who is able to stop him has had his soul trapped in Hell. It leaves a fairly motley bunch of characters to try and save the day by battling the enemy, traversing great distances and, more often than not, facing up to their own hidden demons.

Expect plenty of action, lots of fantastical characters and enough magic to keep even Gandalf happy. I really enjoyed the book, but there were just a few things that stopped me giving it a full 5 stars. The characters names really got on my nerves, especially when the same person may have up to 3 or 4 names. While this in itself gets me a little confused, the main issue was that many of the names were so similar. Quite often I would find myself skimming back a few pages to try and find who was who (it didn’t help that I put it down for a few days either). The only other flaw I found, and it isn’t anything major, was that much of the plot just seemed to rely on convenience or was just explained away with the alternate dimension get out clause. As I said, this wasn’t anything that took anything away from the plot too much, but it was noticeable.

Well worth a read if you are a fan of heroic fantasy, but probably not the place I would start as an introduction to Gemmell. ( )

Like the first book, I didn't care for this as much as some of Gemmell's other books, mainly because of the muddled setting. Is this a Rigante book, and alternate Earth book (Wotan, Uther, Goths) or something else entirely that just uses a lot of names from Earth? This one also felt the whole way like there was too much Fate involved. ( )

Life is not going too well for Ulther Pendragon right now. His realm is under threat from hordes of goths, and their leader, the dark barbarian god Wotan, has chained Ulther's soul in hell, in an attempt to secure Ulther's magical sword. Cue an assortment of characters that undertake a rescue to free Ulther from Wotan's clutches and vanquish the incoming horde of goths.

"Last Sword of Power" is quite an interesting sequel to [Ghost King]. All of the major characters return from the first novel, and Gemmell has managed to reinvent many of the characters of the first novel. In spite of this reinvention, the new personalities make sense considering the events that have transpired since the end of the first novel, much of which is only revealed in the middle or latter parts of "Last Sword of Power".

I also quite enjoy Gemmell's take on the Arthurian fantasy - there are quite a few liberties taken here, but it's quite enjoyable nonetheless. If you have read Gemmell before, you know what sort of story this is, but it is quite enjoyable nonetheless. ( )