From Publishers Weekly
Bestseller Cornwell leaps back a millennium from his Richard Sharpe series to tell of the consolidation of England in the late ninth century and the role played by a young (fictional) warrior-in-training who's at the center of the war between Christian Englishmen and the pagan Danes. (Most of the other principal characters—Ubba, Guthrum, Ivar the Boneless and the like—are real historical figures.) Young Uhtred, who's English, falls under the control of Viking über-warrior Ragnar the Fearless when the Dane wipes out Uhtred's Northumberland family. Cornwell liberally feeds readers history and nuggets of battle data and customs, with Uhtred's first-person wonderment spinning all into a colorful journey of (self-)discovery. In a series of episodes, Ragnar conquers three of England's four kingdoms. The juiciest segment has King Edmund of East Anglia rebuking the Viking pagans and demanding that they convert to Christianity if they intend to remain in England. After Edmund cites the example of St. Sebastian, the Danes oblige him by turning him into a latter-day Sebastian and sending him off to heaven. Uhtred's affection for Ragnar as a surrogate father grows, and he surpasses the conqueror's blood sons in valor. When father and adopted son arrive at the fourth and last kingdom, however, the Danes meet unexpected resistance and Uhtred faces personal and familial challenges, as well as a crisis of national allegiance. This is a solid adventure by a crackling good storyteller. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
You will look in vain for burnt oatcakes in this novel of King Alfred the Great; like Bernard Cornwell's brilliant trilogy of novels on King Arthur, which lacked both Holy Grail and enchanted sword, The Last Kingdom caters to those of us whose appetite for rehashed legends was satisfied long ago. In addition to providing thrilling combat action and satisfying details of material life, military accoutrement and battle tactics, Cornwell's best historical fiction pleases us mightily in the way his renditions of the great actors and events of yore stray from received versions. Such contrariness is partly the product of meticulous research and partly of a mischievous sense of humor. Happily, both inform The Last Kingdom throughout.The Alfred of history and fable was learned and just, a pious man of delicate health who saved 9th-century England from being entirely colonized by pagan Danes and was elevated to sainthood after his death. Indeed, W.C. Sellar and R.J. Yeatman identified him as England's first "Good King" in 1066 and All That -- which peerless repository of mangled historical cliché went on, naturally enough, to confound him with Arthur. The Alfred whom Cornwell sets before us is also learned and just, and he's pious in spades, always "wearing out his knees" in prayer and cherishing such relics as "a feather from the dove that Noah had released from the ark" and "a toe ring that had belonged to Mary Magdalene." But he is also a compulsive, if remorseful, fornicator, a martyr to hemorrhoids and intestinal distress and, at times, a hard-nosed conniver.What we see of him in this, the first volume of a projected sequence, comes through the eyes of one Uhtred, whose tale, narrated from the vantage of old age, this really is. Born of noble stock in Northumbria, Uhtred is only 10 in 866, when he witnesses the battle that brings death to his father, "a morose man, expecting the worst and not fond of children." Captured and adopted by the far more congenial Ragnar, a fearless, high-spirited Danish lord, Uhtred embarks upon a perfect pagan boyhood, freed of the trammels of Christianity. He spends his hours burning "green muck" off the hulls of Danish ships, shield painting, cattle slaughtering, house thatching, tending charcoal burns and practicing with his sword, all admirably described -- and, eventually, in youthful sexual dalliance, not described, but which would have brought fire and brimstone down on his head in a Christian community.The boy does not miss his father, or monkish censure or the noxious grind of learning to read, and becomes quite the pagan Dane in most ways. Uhtred's great object in life is to fight in a "shield wall" -- one of Cornwell's specialties (whereby warriors advance in a row, shields overlapping) -- and to reclaim his inheritance, the family domain and stronghold in Northumbria. His uncle has taken possession of both, cementing his hold by marrying Uhtred's father's widow. Vexed loyalties begin to proliferate in Uhtred's youthful bosom: toward England, toward the good-natured Danish lord, against a treacherous Danish villain, toward Danish paganism and against English Christian morality. Treacheries and prevarications abound, fortunes reverse, battles rage, and soon enough the youth ends up back with the English -- and his loyalties, well shuffled, begin to gravitate toward Alfred. This feeling turns to rueful wonder when he realizes that the great man has sent him on a mission meant to kill him, a breach of saintliness Alfred commits more than once.This is a most enjoyable novel, and Cornwell has seasoned it with dashes of intoxicating pedantry. He shuns the word "Viking" (which "describes an activity rather than a people or a tribe. To go viking meant to go raiding") and eliminates horned helmets ("for which there is not a scrap of contemporary evidence"). His prose is not always the equal of his historical imagination and sense of character: He does not, for instance, achieve Patrick O'Brian's marriage of language and vision. Still, he does convey the disquiet of change and the melancholy of extinction as few historical novelists manage to.The England of the 9th century conjured up here is a palimpsest, an ancient isle giving ghostly testimony to successive civilizations. Prehistoric forts, "old when the world was young," still exist, moldering and growing into the land. So, too, Roman roads continue to bear traffic and Roman structures still stand, left behind almost five centuries ago and inherited by peoples lacking the engineering and architectural capability or understanding to repair them. Here and there these marvels of imperial technology, materials and manpower provide the foundations for crude Saxon building, as in London, "where huge Roman buildings were buttressed by thatched wooden shacks." Meanwhile, the city's great bridge is falling down, and the old wharves and quays are "long rotted so that the waterfront east of the bridge was a treacherous place of rotted pilings and broken piers that stabbed the river like shattered teeth." Place names are abundant in this peripatetic adventure, and in their Saxon forms we find the weird, almost ectoplasmic predecessors of today's tame locutions: Lundene, Eoferwic (York), Suth Seaxa (Sussex), Thornsaeta (Dorset), Defnascir (Devonshire) and Snotengaham. Cornwell wouldn't be his merry self if he didn't teach us that Nottingham was once bountiful Snotengaham, "the Home of Snot's people." Nor would he be his generous and indefatigable self if he did not promise us that this story "is far from over." Reviewed by Katherine A. Powers Copyright 2005, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

From Booklist
An acknowledged master of rousing battlefield fiction as evidenced by his crackling Richard Sharpe series, Cornwell also deserves praise for his mesmerizing narrative finesse and his authentic historical detailing. Here he introduces a new multivolume saga set in medieval England prior to the unification of the four Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Northumbria, East Anglia, Mercia, and Wessex. Weakened by civil war, Northumbria is invaded by the fearless Danes, and Uhtred, the rightful heir to the earldom of Bebbanburg, is captured by the enemy. Raised as a Viking warrior by Ragnar the Terrible, his beloved surrogate father, Uhtred is still torn by an innate desire to reclaim his birthright. Fighting as a Dane but realizing that his ultimate destiny lies along another path, he seizes the opportunity to serve Alfred, king of Wessex, after Ragnar is horribly betrayed and murdered by Kjartan, a fellow Dane. Ever watchful and ever practical, Uhtred awaits his chance to settle the blood feud with Kjartan and to seize Bebbanburg from his treacherous uncle. Leaving his hero suspended on the threshold of realizing his desires, Cornwell masterfully sets up his audience for the second volume in this irresistible epic adventure. Margaret Flanagan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Booklist
"Masterful....[An]irresistible epic adventure....Cornwell deserves praise for his mesmerizing narrative finesse and his authentic historical detailing."

Publishers Weekly
"A crackling good storyteller."

Kirkus Reviews
"Cornwell .... makes the usually gloomy ninth century sound like a hell of a lot of fun."

Library Journal (starred review)
"Highly recommended … another great historical series in the making."

Entertainment Weekly
"Enter Cornwell’s vividly drawn ninth-century Kingdom … after this dip into the Dark Ages, we want to go back."

Boston Globe
"History comes alive."

Wall Street Journal
"Enthralling ... the desperate, heroic struggle of Alfred "the Great" ... against the seemingly invincible Vikings.

Book Description

From Bernard Cornwell, the New York Times bestselling author whom the Washington Post calls "perhaps the greatest writer of historical adventure novels today," comes a saga of blood, rage, fidelity, and betrayal that brings to center stage King Alfred the Great, one of the most crucial (but oft-forgotten) figures in English history. It is King Alfred and his heirs who, in the ninth and tenth centuries, with their backs against the wall, fought to secure the survival of the last outpost of Anglo-Saxon culture by battling the ferocious Vikings, whose invading warriors had already captured and occupied three of England's four kingdoms.

Bernard Cornwell's epic novel opens in A.D. 866. Uhtred, a boy of ten and the son of a nobleman, is captured in the same battle that leaves his father dead. His captor is the Earl Ragnar, a Danish chieftain, who raises the boy as his own, teaching him the Viking ways of war. As a young man expected to take part in raids and bloody massacres against the English, he grapples with divided loyalties -- between Ragnar, the warrior he loves like a father, and Alfred, whose piety and introspection leave him cold. It takes a terrible slaughter and the unexpected joys of marriage for Uhtred to discover his true allegiance -- and to rise to his greatest challenge.

In Uhtred, Cornwell has created perhaps his richest and most complex protagonist, and through him, he has magnificently evoked an era steeped in dramatic pageantry and historical significance. For if King Alfred fails to defend his last kingdom, England will be overrun, and the entire course of history will change.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Uhtred is an English boy, born into the aristocracy of ninth-century Northumbria. Orphaned at ten, he is captured and adopted by a Dane and taught the Viking ways. Yet Uhtred's fate is indissolubly bound up with Alfred, King of Wessex, who rules over the only English kingdom to survive the Danish assault." The struggle between the English and the Danes and the strife between Christianity and paganism is the background to Uhtred's growing up. He is left uncertain of his loyalties but a slaughter in a winter dawn propels him to the English side and he will become a man just as the Danes launch their fiercest attack yet on Alfred's kingdom. Marriage ties him further still to the West Saxon cause but when his wife and child vanish in the chaos of the Danish invasion, Uhtred is driven to face the greatest of the Viking chieftains in a battle beside the sea. There, in the horror of the shield-wall, he discovers his true allegiance.

FROM THE CRITICS

Katherine A. Powers - The Washington Post

In addition to providing thrilling combat action and satisfying details of material life, military accoutrement and battle tactics, Cornwell's best historical fiction pleases us mightily in the way his renditions of the great actors and events of yore stray from received versions. Such contrariness is partly the product of meticulous research and partly of a mischievous sense of humor. Happily, both inform The Last Kingdom throughout.

Library Journal

The ninth century witnessed the beginning of deadly raids and incursions along England's coastlines and waterways as Danes went a-Viking in search of riches of gold and silver and, most important, land. Opposing the invaders was the king of Wessex, Alfred the Great. Best-selling author Cornwell (Sharpe's Escape) explores this tumultuous period through the eyes of a Saxon nobleman's son. Ten-year-old Uhtred joins his father in battle to save their land of Northumbria from invasion. During the conflict, in which his father is killed, Uhtred is captured by the Danes and spends the next several years as the adopted son of war-leader Ragnar. Even after returning to his own people, Uhtred finds his loyalty torn. He despises the priest-ridden, sickly King Alfred and admires the Viking warriors who raised him. As a third-generation Dane, this reviewer can't help but root for the Danes right along with Uhtred. It doesn't hurt that Cornwell has clearly made them the more sympathetic and interesting characters. Another great historical series in the making, this is highly recommended for all public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 9/15/04.]-Jane Henriksen Baird, Anchorage Municipal Libs., AK Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews