Explore our new BookBrowse Community Forum!

Excerpt from The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Summary |  Excerpt |  Reviews |  Beyond the Book |  Readalikes |  Genres & Themes |  Author Bio

The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman

The Bright Sword

A Novel of King Arthur

by Lev Grossman
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus:
  • First Published:
  • Jul 16, 2024, 688 pages
  • Rate this book

  • Buy This Book

About this Book

Print Excerpt


"That is ill said of you, sir." Collum cleared his throat. "I ask again: Do you yield to me now?"

"Well, that all depends," the man replied, "on whether or not you've fucked your mother yet."

He was angry, obviously. It was embarrassing, losing to an unfledged knightling. God knows he, Collum, wouldn't have wanted to lose to himself. But it wasn't his idea to fight, was it?

Maybe he was hurt after all. Maybe he was in pain. Collum put out his hand to help him up, and the mystery knight held out his own—but then quick as a lizard he grabbed Collum's wrist instead, and with his other hand he whipped something thin and dark out of a sheath at his waist—a misericord, a long, thin knife made for slipping between armor plates—and thrust it up at Collum's groin.

Purely on instinct Collum twisted his hips and took the blow smartly on his steel skirt. He caught the man's knife hand and for a heartbeat they strained against each other, trembling. The knight kicked Collum's ankles out and rolled on top of him with all his weight, and Collum lost the knife hand—God's blood!—and panicked and scrabbled and caught it again just in time to keep his throat from getting laid open.

He threw his other arm around the man's shoulders, heaved with his hips, and rolled them back over.

"God's nails, stop!" His voice cracked hysterically. "Just yield!"

Collum fumbled for his own knife and forced it through the slit in the knight's helm. The knight trembled like a rabbit in a snare and clawed at Collum's face and thrust wildly with his pelvis. Then he coughed once and went still.

The sound of insects was loud, like dry seeds rattling in a dry pod. Silent pillars of golden country sunlight were slowly burning the green timothy grass into hay.

The knight lay flat on the ground as if he'd fallen there from a great height.

Jesus. Collum scrambled to his feet, breathing hard. Shitting Jesus. Thou recreant knight. He'd never killed a man before. God have mercy on us both.

The man kicked once and then stopped moving forever. The only part of him that was exposed was that one fish-pale hand, the one he'd bared to go for his misericord. There were brown speckles on the back of it, some ropy blue veins. Sir Misericord had not been in his first youth.

And now he was dead. And for what? Nothing. A game, played for no one, in an empty field.

And to think that they were barely a day's ride from Camelot, the sun that bathed all of Britain in the golden light of chivalry.

"God have mercy," Collum whispered. An hour ago he'd been no one, then he was a hero, and now he was a murderer. He stood there for a long time, he didn't know how long. A cloud passed in front of the sun. The two horses, his and the dead knight's, watched him with long-lashed disinterest.

Then Collum knelt and with a shudder drew his knife out of the man's eye socket. He walked over to where the fallen knight's shield lay face down on the matted grass and turned it over with his toe. You could still make out the arms under a hasty coat of white paint: Azure, Three Scepters, a Chevron Or.

Excerpted from THE BRIGHT SWORD by Lev Grossman. To be published by Viking, an imprint of the Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC on July 16, 2024. Copyright © 2024 by Cozy Horse Limited.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: Graveyard Shift
    Graveyard Shift
    by M. L. Rio
    Following the success of her debut novel, If We Were Villains, M. L. Rio's latest book is the quasi-...
  • Book Jacket: The Sisters K
    The Sisters K
    by Maureen Sun
    The Kim sisters—Minah, Sarah, and Esther—have just learned their father is dying of ...
  • Book Jacket: Linguaphile
    Linguaphile
    by Julie Sedivy
    From an infant's first attempts to connect with the world around them to the final words shared with...
  • Book Jacket
    The Rest of You
    by Maame Blue
    At the start of Maame Blue's The Rest of You, Whitney Appiah, a Ghanaian Londoner, is ringing in her...

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Pony Confidential
    by Christina Lynch

    In this whimsical mystery, a grumpy pony must clear his beloved human's name from a murder accusation.

Who Said...

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

F the M

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.