Tidhar turns King Arthur's court into a gangster's paradise, full of wheelings and dealings, and true grit. If the tale didn't go down like this, it should have.

Wow, what a ride! As complete a deconstruction and reimagining of a traditional legend as I’ve read.The author takes the established King Arthur legend and removes any links by creators of that story in the Middle Ages to a chivalrous, medieval world of damsels in distress and knights on noble quests in plated armour. Instead the author anchors it in the period where the real but rather meagre rumours of a King Arthur are found - dark age Britain in the 5th century CE, just after the departure o...

This book was super disappointing to me, I’m sorry to say.I love the Arthur story (the Matter of Britain, if I want to sound fancy). I’m always up for a new take on it. I also happen to be a big fan of creative reimaginings, so when I saw on the blurb that this Arthur was a jumped-up gangster from the streets of Londinium I was intrigued. The fact that I also love mob movies didn’t hurt either.(aside: I didn’t like the book, but I did really appreciate when Sir Ulfius was relating part of the st...

By Force Alone is a unique retelling of the tale of Arthur and the Round Table. Lavie Tdihar takes the heroism out of it and displays most characters as naive dumbheads. This was fun for a while and the dialogues can be pretty witty. After more than 200+ pages into the story and having finished part 5 I finally throw the towel for now. What I am missing most is coherent story telling with some meaning, not these short character focused snippets that try so hard to be witty. So much is either jus...

A power hungry upstart, sycophant followers, a woman who can take care of herself and those outside the circle who manipulate them all. The author has pulled together various Arthurian legends and taken away the rose-colored glasses. I enjoyed this take on the story and I can totally believe the comparisons to gang fighting over territory. As an aside (and I don’t think the author meant this necessarily) there were times I felt it was a political statement of the times.

How do you rate a book where around 70% of it it’s a 3-3.5 read and the last 30% is an amazing five stars which makes you reevaluate the whole thing ? 9/10? An average?What a ride..The best of Tidhar I read so far with the stalker, I mean , the crawler part, a personal favorite. Brilliant stuff.

Excellent fun, and despite the weirdness, well researched. Imagine if Guy Ritchie and Irvine Welsh wrote a book together about King Arthur, with a touch of Tarantino, and it's this. Book 1 of 4 (not the same characters) , the next one is The Hood about Robin Hood, so I expect more weirdness and fun.

A grim retelling of the Arthurian legend, placed back in its proper historical context (post-Roman Britain) and without all the Medieval romance elements? Of course I’ll read that! Especially when it is written by the master of genre-bending, Mr. Lavie Tidhar!I’m very hard to please when it comes to Arthuriana: I have read so many different versions, and it takes a lot to stand out when retelling such a famous story. This one is unique, over the top and very gory. If you don’t deal well with blo...

Is by force alone a novel about the Arthurian legend ? not really it is a book about force alone seen easy from the title. what will you do to have what you want and what will it take to get it."To be a king the innocents must die, to be a king the guilty live, to be a king is to be judge and executioner both, and rule by force alone.''- The book takes a perspective of a mythical story more than a linear story, like in the Iliad by Homer. That had its ups and downs for me. I was liking the story...

This is another interpretation of Arthurian legend, this time as criminal bosses. The book heavily alludes to movies, but because I prefer reading to watching I probably missed some.The book starts with Uther Pendragon (future father of king Arthur) killing king Vortigern (and his family), finding Merlin, and starting ruling ‘by force alone’ as the title suggests. There is a lot of blood and gore, and some following of the classic mythos.Then we shift to Londinium, a city that Romans left and wh...

This book is like an HBO original series: exceedingly violent and vulgar but with very little substance. The descriptions were vivid and intricate, with politics and relationships well defined, but there were a lot of moving parts and very few "reasons for being" beyond "why not?" or "because I can" which I found very hard to accept as a longterm goal in fiction. Of course, it felt very realistic (minus the magic) that the kings were all puffed up gangsters lying, cheating, whoring, and stealing...

I'm fairly sure Tidhar was that kid whose report cards always said, "If Lavie could just leanr to apply himself ..." See, I've read two Tidhars before, both did-not-finish. But this had good recommendations and a good cover blurb, so I went for it. He's done his research, he knows his Arthur, and he knows how cobbled-together the modern versions are. So why can't we uncobble it a bit, and perhaps be giggly high some of the time we're writing it, and maybe drunk a few times, and have some FUN? Ye...

(Full disclosure—every couple of years Lavie and I end up in the back of a bar saying mean things to one another, so I can't pretend to be entirely unbiased here) A re-telling of the Arthurian legend serves as Tidhar's opportunity to shove all his genre interests into one violent, funny, absurd epic, with Guinevere as a cold-blooded hitwoman and Lancelot a wuxia master. Tidhar remains an utterly original voice contemporary fiction, a pulp master striking out boldly in unexpected directions.

I chose this book not because I’m an aficionado of Arthurian legend, but because I was so impressed by Lavie Tidhar’s A Man Lies Dreaming. I figured that anybody who could come up with such an astonishing re-imagination of a bit of 20th-century history could be trusted to do something just as amazing with the Arthur legend.Tidhar’s Arthurian world is no dreamy Camelot, no land of chivalry, gallant knights and fair maidens. Britain is a dirty, decrepit place, abandoned by the Romans and ruled by

Thanks to Netgalley for providing a copy of this book for review.I'm a big fan of Arthuriana. I've read multiple takes on the myth and I've read a fair number of the original stories - Geoffrey of Monmouth, Wace, Chretien de Troyes, von Eschenbach. The book was reasonably entertaining. It's sort of a mildly grimdark look at Arthur- what if he was raised in a London whorehouse and was essentially a gangster fighting for new territory? What if Lancelot was Jewish and knew kung fu? What if Gueniver...

Is still possible to write an original retelling of a well known story as King Arthur's is? Well, it's possible: Lavie Tidhar has done it. Beware of the witty dialogues and the funny remarks, which make those popular characters (Arthur, Merlin, Morgan, Lancelot, etc) relatable, interesting and relevant. In this account the Middle Age does not seem, after all, that far away in time and space. If you want to laugh, be surprised and experience wonderful adventures, you must read this book!

Crowning irreverence, by force alone4/5This was my first Lavie Tidhar book but by no means my last; He certainly is a gifted writer full of ideas, quick turns of phrase, humor, thematic depth and allegory. However, he has so many ideas and critiques/satire to drown the King Arthur mythos that the novel can't quite decide what it wants to be. Atmospheric? Tarantino pulp with a penchant for Taika Watiti comedy? Straight satire? A gangster take on Arthurian legend? All in all there is much fun to b...

I've been a fan of Tidhar for some time now, picking up book after book not even giving a peso for the contents, sure that I would be amazed and thrown into a thoughtful tailspin with whatever I encountered.So what did I see?An unapologetic retelling of the Arthurian Legend. :)"Wait!" -- you say -- "Hasn't the Arthurian Legend been done like a million times?"And I would say, "Yep! And I've read a ton of them, and THIS one not only builds on the twisty-strides of the others, but it subverts them

I’ve always been a fan of legends and mythology, British folklore being of particular interest, so when I heard Lavie Tidhar was writing a book based on the Arthurian cycle I have to admit I got a bit excited. It turns out my excitement was more than a little justified. By Force Alone has been released this week and it is everything I hoped it would be and more.The novel follows Arthur through his entire life. From Uther Pendragon’s tryst with Igraine to Arthur’s final meeting with Mordred. You

Another new iteration of the Arthur myth – and given the ongoing national nervous breakdown, I'd imagine there are a few more in the pipeline. The reworker this time, though, is Israeli, so it's neither the usual project of British self-examination, nor another awkward attempt to take the legend to Hollywood. The blurb – "This is the story of a legend forged from a pack of self-serving, turd-gilding, weasel-worded lies told to justify foul deeds and ill-gotten gains" – suggests a demythologised