well, this one's certainly not gonna be for everyone. it's kind of the brutalist style, constantly thrusting, so you can only read a little bit at a time, and then you have to go away to contemplate what the author's up to with every line - and then recover for a while before you go back to it. having said all that though, i immediately ordered the next book in the quartet. the author knows his Matiere de Bretagne backwards and forwards (and in this case upside down), and he knows how to apply it for his purposes; also, it's a lot more accurate in its portrait of post-Roman Britain, and the not-so-noble motivations of Kings (see title). it's not pretty, it's a pastiche of nasty, brutish, and short that ruthlessly deconstructs the pretty that crept in quite early to versions of the old serial story, and the liberal use of modern-day vernacular more than implies that the era has much in common with our own in the naked pursuit of power at all costs. so it's a grimdark version of a fairy tale, in a way, pursuing historical and sociological implications about politics and human nature. my quibbles: Guinevere doesn't quite come alive for me, he leans way too heavily on repeating that title for emphasis at the beginning, and the shift halfway through from the Arthurian (with Merlin as narrator) matiere to the Late Arthurian (Lancelot as narrator) didn't come off very smoothly. but the book works on its own terms right through, it's even very funny in a cynical way, and it has a lot of very interesting and incisive stuff to say with all those characters and layers. altogether, it's major work from a major writer in the field. ( )

King Arthur but everyone is homicidal. I tried to finish but my next book arrived and I read that instead. ( )

I’d say the last thing the Matter of Britain needs is another interpretation, but King Arthur has been reinvented a number of times, and it does seem somewhat fitting given the nature of the myth – a hero for a time when he’s needed. Except, of course, most retellings of the Matter of Britain aren’t actually about the time of the retelling, and are usually no more than badly-faked historical stories distorted by the lens of the present. Which is also true of By Force Alone. But here it’s deliberate, very much so. In typical Tidhar fashion, By Force Alone makes heavy play with present-day cultural references. Arthur’s early years, and the formation of the Round Table, read like a cross between The Sopranos and a Guy Ritchie movie. But, Tidhar being a genre author, the novel features a weird mix of fantasy and science fiction tropes. It’s very much a book of two halves; and in the second half, a meteor impacts in Scotland, thought by all to be a dragon, and the area around the impact site is heavily poisoned, but also generates strange magical effects. Tidhar manages to graft the Grail Quest onto this, including rivalry among the Fae over the champions they have chosen. By Force Alone hits the main beats of the legend, but it’s a singular interpretation of it, one which, unlike most Matter of Britain stories, neither romanticises nor valorises Arthur and his knights, nor presents them as avatars of English exceptionalism (they weren’t, of course, English; assuming they ever existed, that is). I didn’t need another spin on King Arthur, but Tidhar delivered one and I find myself glad he did. If there’s any justice, this novel will kill the Arthuriana genre stone dead. And Guy Ritchie’s career. ( )

If you really like your "Le Morte d'Arthur" you will really dislike this book, as Tidhar takes the stuff of Arthurian legend and uses it to execute a work of grimdark satire. Is it actually any good? I thought so, though there is no denying that some portions work better than others. Recommended for those folks who like mud and blood and spleen in their fantasy. ( )

A brilliant retelling of the Arthurian Legend - it's a dark and dirty version of the legend, much like the reality of history never lives up to the shiny, PC version often taught in school, which makes it feel more real, as though this was the truth of Arthur, if Arthur, Merlin, Camelot, et al were real. I would have preferred a little less swearing, and there are a couple of elements that were very repetitive, which became distracting and annoying. If I'd had to read the phrase "by force alone" one more time, I'd have thrown the book through a wall by force alone. I don't appreciate being beaten over the head with a theme of a novel. I wanted to scream "I get it, okay. Can we move on, please?" Other than those two quibbles, I enjoyed the tale, and the more I think about it, the more I like it. ( )