The Bright Sword

A witty and compulsive reimagining of the King Arthur legend for the new millennium, from the No. 1 New York Times bestselling author of the Magicians trilogy.

A book of the year for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Time, Vulture, Esquire, Goodreads, Elle, NPR, Vox, New York Post, Lit Hub, Cosmo, People, Paste, Vanity Fair, Polygon, BookBub, BookRiot, and more!

If you love King Arthur as much as I do, you'll love The Bright Sword . . . the creator of The Magicians has woven another spell.
— GEORGE R. R. MARTIN, author of A Game of Thrones

Made me love fantasy again . . . For pretty much everyone, The Bright Sword is a must-read.
— PASTE MAGAZINE, Book of the Year

The best fantasy of the year.
— THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, Book of the Year

For anyone who's ever craved a seat at the Round Table. Utterly enchanting.
— REBECCA YARROS, author of Fourth Wing

When gifted young knight Collum arrives at Camelot to compete for a place on the Round Table, he quickly discovers that he's too late—the king died two weeks ago at the Battle of Camlann, and only a handful of the knights of the Round Table are left.

The survivors aren't the heroes of legend either, like Lancelot or Gawain. They're the oddballs of the Round Table, like Sir Palomides, the Saracen Knight, and Sir Dagonet, Arthur's fool, who was knighted as a joke. They're joined by Nimue, who was Merlin's apprentice until she turned on him and buried him under a hill.

It's up to them to rebuild Camelot in a world that has lost its balance, even as God abandons Britain and the fairies and old gods are returning, led by Morgan le Fay. They must reclaim Excalibur and make this ruined world whole again.

But first they'll have to solve the mystery of why the lonely, brilliant King Arthur fell.

The first major Arthurian epic of the new millennium, The Bright Sword is a story about imperfect men and women who are looking for a way to fight darkness and reforge a broken land.