George RR Martin mentioned 2004 basic is his favorite ebook ever written | Books | Entertainment | EUROtoday

George R.R. Martin could also be finest often called the person behind Game of Thrones, however when he isn’t busy killing off characters or plotting main twists, he’s doing what he’s at all times accomplished: studying.

And in 2020, the fantasy titan revealed the one collection that stood above all others for him – a story of protect partitions, bloodied swords, and one notably cussed warrior named Uhtred.

George RR Martin named Bernard Cornwell’s The Last Kingdom collection – formally often called The Saxon Stories – as his all-time favorite. The books comply with Uhtred of Bebbanburg, a dispossessed Northumbrian lord raised by Vikings, who serves varied kings throughout the turbulent delivery of England. The first novel, The Last Kingdom, was printed in 2004 and went on to grow to be the premise for the hit Netflix collection of the identical identify.

“I read. A lot,” he started on his weblog submit titled ‘Old Favorites, New Favorites’. “Since I was a kid… but the best times are when a story really gets its hooks into me and I find I cannot put it down. Bernard Cornwell is one of the writers who never fails to grab me by the throat.”

Martin praised the complete Uhtred saga, writing, “I have loved his Sharpe books, several of his stand-alones, his Thomas of Hookton series, his Arthurian triad… but my favorite is his long-running Saxon series.” He referred to as the latest quantity on the time, War Lord, “excellent, as always,” and admitted: “It went right to the top of the stack, and I gulped it right down.”

For Martin, Cornwell’s potential to provide renewed life to a long-forgotten nook of British historical past set him other than everybody else. “No one writes better historical fiction than Cornwell… and the Saxon series is especially cool in that it brings to life a part of British history that I knew almost nothing about.”

He famous that whereas different historic intervals have been “done to death, in good books and bad ones,” Cornwell discovered one thing recent and ignored: “The battle scenes are terrific, as ever. Cornwell brings battles to life like no one else, whether he is writing about the shield walls of the Dark Ages or the musketry of the Napoleonic Era.”

Althought, amidst the reward, Martin bitersweetly famous that War Lord is perhaps the tip of Uhtred’s journey: “It reads as if it is the last Uhtred. We have been following him since childhood, but he is very old now, and on his third king, and the epilogue definitely gives the impression that his tale is at an end. If so… well, he had a great run, but I will miss him.”

“Though maybe Cornwell will continue with tales of Uhtred son of Uhtred son of Uhtred, who knows?”, he humorously added.

Cornwell’s books have since been adapted for television, with The Last Kingdom series first airing on the BBC in 2015 before being picked up by Netflix. Across five seasons and a film finale (Seven Kings Must Die), the story reached millions of new fans, with Alexander Dreymon taking on the lead role.

“If you like historical fiction, read War Lord by all means,” he wrote, “but don’t start there. If you have not been following Uhtred previously, you want the start with The Last Kingdom. Despite having ‘last’ in the title, it is actually the first book in the series.”