The Sky Stone

Janis Svilpis is a professor of English at the University of Calgary.

I came to this book asking myself whether I wanted to read yet another
retelling of the Arthurian legend. It took Whyte only a few pages to
convince me that I did. This is the first volume in what promises to be
a long series, since it ends well before the birth of Arthur. I expect
to stay with it because Whyte has a real gift for narrative, and his
version of the story is inventive, imaginative, and highly original. But
having said that, I have to say also that some of what I found here is
very annoying.

The northern Celts have come over Hadrian’s Wall and the Roman Empire
is crumbling. Legate Caius Britannicus and his former primus pilus,
Gaius Publius Varrus, resist the forces of decay, founding a survivalist
colony, allying themselves with the milder Celts of King Ullic
Pendragon, and settling in for the Saxon invasion. Varrus, who is among
other things a gifted metalworker, has been haunted by his
grandfather’s smelting of a “skystone” to produce a unique sword
and dagger. By the end of this volume, he has smelted his own ingot of
meteoric nickel-iron and is ready to forge—you guessed it—Excalibur.
This is the barest outline of a story full of action, passion, and
historical and metallurgical detail.

Some of this detail comes in ill-digested lumps; some of the prose is a
bit purple, especially in the lovemaking scenes; and some characters,
like Britannicus’s sister, Luceiia, seem more rooted in the 20th
century than in the 4th century. Still, the narrative flows on almost
irresistibly. In fact, it flows past a lot of things that could have
been better handled. King Ullic’s ready acceptance of Britannicus’s
group simplifies the issues of colonialism that it raises. The conflict
between Varrus’s Rambo-style soldiering and his Christian values
doesn’t have much effect on his personality; his personal revenge on
Caesarius Claudius Seneca is very ugly. This rousing adventure story
does have an undeniable intellectual dimension, but it could have been
even more thoughtful than it is.