By Force Alone

Everyone thinks they know the story of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table. Geoffrey of Monmouth, Malory's Morte D'Arthur, Marion Zimmer Bradley's Mists of . . . whatever. You can look it up on Wikipedia. You can see it in those pretty Pre-Raphaelite paintings. But there was never a painting that showed the true Britain, the clogged sewer Rome abandoned just as soon as it could. A Britain where petty warlords murdered each other in the mud, and all the while the Angles and Saxons and—worst of all—the Jutes, were coming over here and taking our lands and taking our jobs and taking our women. And what of the only man who could stop them. What of Arthur, King of the Britons? An over-promoted gangster, in thrall to that eldritch parasite, Merlin. Excalibur? A shady deal with a watery arms dealer. The Grail Quest? Have you no idea about the aliens and the radioactive blight? Ach. Well, you'd better read this then.

Lavie Tidhar is the World Fantasy Award-winning author of Osama, The Bookman, The Violent Century, the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize-winning A Man Lies Dreaming, and the Campbell Award-winning Central Station. His latest novel, the Locus Award-nominated Unholy Land, was named a Best Book of 2018 by NPR, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and the Guardian.