I enjoy reading historical fiction quite a bit and when I do, I want to lose myself in the book and become part of that historical time. Unfortunately, this author provided factual and nonfiction information at the beginning of the book, and at the beginning of all the chapters, which, while helpful and appreciated, prevented me from losing myself in the time of Arthur. The other issue is that I had just read a book suggesting that Arthur and his battles were in Scotland. That book was not nonfiction so it's unfair to compare the two, but having read that perhaps it was more disconcerting to read these snippets of factual information to give context to the historical fiction of the book which prevented me from losing myself. Plus this book's historical commentary was directly opposite to that of the other Scotland-based book. The truly fictional parts of Arthur's story were enjoyable in this book, but I couldn't lose myself in the book.. ( )

This book attempted to combine a fictional narrative of King Arthur, his knights, and Merlin with historical context. I did find the discussion of historical sources quite interesting and informative, but thought the story part of the book could have flowed better. In general, I think this book would have benefitted by sticking to either historical discussion OR a fictional narrative, as better attention could be paid to one avenue.

It is a decent book and I enjoyed it, but could be better fleshed out.

I received an ebook copy of this title from LibraryThing in exchange for a review ( )

My main problem with this book relates to its genre: was it attempting to provide a factual account of something that might have happened, as evidenced by the early parts of chapters and the way chapters had year indicators. Or was it attempting to tell a story, as evidenced with the main part of each chapter. To my mind, it didn't do either of those very well—the historical discussion was limited, and the narrative sections shallow and episodic, lacking a stronger overarching narrative drive. On the whole, the impression I got was similar to those television documentaries that don't appear to trust the their line of argument and the evidence presented without dropping in actors acting out some of the scenes with all the depth and charisma of cardboard cutouts. This is a pity, as I think there was a solid idea behind the book, to look at where a real historical Arthur might have fitted in the actual course of history. ( )

Dark Age Monarch by Joseph Swope is part academic part fictional story. It was sort of interesting on the noted "evidence" by writers closer to the era. It was an interesting take on Ambrosias/Merlin. The Black Knight sections were different, but quite scarce. Other than that it followed the standard Arthurian legend tropes.

This was a good rendering of the Reign of King Arthur. I really have not read too much about the dark age reign of this noted King. There was a lot of interesting research done for this and kudos to the author for sharing that information with the reader.
What a mighty king Arthur was with his Knights of the Round Table, etc.

This book was provided to me by librarything.com for early review.

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