By Force Alone by Lavie Tidhar

By Force Alone Reviews

• 
  Gabrielle

  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 blood, guts and other bodily fluids, maybe just skip it and read Mary Stewart’s “The Crystal Cave” (
  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...)?
  
  When the Romans leave Britain, it creates a power vacuum, and the country plunges into a dark and chaotic power struggle where only the strong survive. There are no tales of courtly love and noble quests in this land: there are only people who take what they want… by force alone. After dispatching the usurper Vortigern, a former mercenary by the name of Uther takes over the lion’s share of Britannia, but that is not enough for him: his ambition is to unite the entire country under a single ruler, to defend it against would-be invaders. With the counsel of a man with strange eyes named Merlin, Uther will begin his work, laying down a path that his more or less legitimate son Arthur will follow in his turn.
  
  Tidhar obviously loves pulp and mafia stories because this is how this Arthurian cycle begins: gang wars in an anarchic Londinium, each little band vying for each other’s territories in a protection racket. Raised as a ward of Sir Hector, Arthur develops a taste for power early in such a place, and after a rather fantastic heist, it’s only a matter of time before he topples the city’s biggest boss – just as Merlin has arranged… From there, you’ll encounter the familiar names, but here Guinevere is a highwaywoman, Lancelot is a hired assassin who knows kung fu, and don’t even get me started on Galahad!
  
  I can see from a quick glance at other reviews that this retelling was not to everyone’s taste, and I can see why. But after years of reading romantic and/or neo-pagan versions, there is something I find oddly refreshing about the grimness of the Dark Ages and the violent and terrifying nature of the mythological creatures that inhabit this land. I remember thumbing through Brian Froud’s beautiful and completely spooky coffee-table book “Faeries” and being both fascinated and baffled with how cruel, dangerous and creepy the creatures of English folklore were: Tidhar pays homage to those old legends here, with a not quite human Merlin, a Morgause with sharp shark teeth, a literal cat-fish who enjoys snacking on drowned men’s fingers and occasional mentions of bloodthirsty Jenny Greenteeth and her monstrous relatives.
  
  I will allow myself to speculate here, and theorize that Tidhar has also had his fill of the polished fantasy Arthurian tales, and I can almost see him giggle maniacally as he sat at his laptop, wondering what it would have been like if kid Arthur had been a small-time drug dealer who struck the big time, how many pop culture references he could sneak into his story and if anyone had ever wondered about the actual nature of the grail, and the strange hallucinations often associated with it. Some blurbs compare it to "Game of Thrones", but I don't think that's right: "Game of Thrones" takes itself much too seriously, and "By Force Alone" has its tongue firmly in cheek as it spins its yarn.
  
  I had so much fun with this over the top and truly bizarre Arthurian story, and if anything is wrong with this book in my opinion, its that it’s too short! I can never get enough of Tidhar’s weirdness, especially not when he decides to re-imagine one of my favorite stories. Like most of his books, it’s not for everyone, but if what I described intrigues you, you should check it out. 4 and a half stars, rounded up.
• 
  Bradley

  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 all. Nastily."
  
  Whoah. But how?
  
  Keep in mind, this is a satire wrapped up in the plausible example of post-Roman occupied London full of thugs and jerks and all kinds of nasties wrapped up in their own legends and they're NOT the nice kinds of legends. Indeed, it reads like a whos-who of modern politics.
  
  By Force Alone glorifies the truncheon.
  
  Practically no one is particularly likable. Some may have redeeming qualities, but damn, the way things pan out, following all the standard events of the Arthurian Legend including all the magic and the inception and his death, this particular retelling is pretty damning. :)
  
  Very enjoyable! A must-read for fans of the genre! (Or anyone that thinks that M. Z. Bradley's work was too tame.) :)
• 
  Silvia Moreno-Garcia

  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.
• 
  Daniel Polansky

  (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.
  
• 
  Steve

  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 of the Roman legions and before the arrival of invading Germanic Anglo-Saxon tribes. Indeed the author includes an interesting but brief history of the construction of the Arthur legend in the Middle Ages by various contributors as a postscript to the story, just to disabuse you of any notion that the well known story is factually based in any way. Nonetheless, the author keeps all of the famous characters and tropes of the established story - Arthur, Merlin, Guinevere, Lancelot, Excalibur, the Sword in the Stone, the Grail, etc.
  
  There are a number of strands to this retelling of the Arthurian legend.
  There’s some well researched historical fiction. The Britain of Arthur uses place names, sometimes Celtic and Anglo-Saxon, to accurately describe the land of that period and with how the Britons and Saxons probably interacted. It’s a decaying post Roman society descending into chaos without central authority, with petty gang leaders and warlords vying for supremacy especially in the main Roman city of Londonium. Nothing noble or chivalrous here, but the survival of the strongest. Unmistakable comparisons are made between the gang leaders of that era, and their money raising activities, with those of modern, possibly Mafia style, leaders.
  
  It’s not just an attempt at accurate historical fiction though. The world has strong magical links, as in the traditional legend. Merlin is a genuine magician with links to the world of the Fae, or fairies. But the fairyland depicted here, and sometimes explored, isn’t somewhere you’d like to visit, populated by other magical presences who, like Merlin, scheme and manipulate humanity out of self interest.
  
  There is even a strand in the story which goes completely at 90 degrees to the traditional legend and is science fiction based. It is the crux of the Grail storyline, and is the nearest part of the story to a Quest by some of the knights! Weird but fascinating. This seemed to me initially too unusual a strand but when one considers that the Holy Grail in the established traditional story is meant to be a holy relic from the Middle East whisked away to England by a confidant of Jesus for some reason or another. That’s no weirder than the SciFi interpretation of a desired artefact used here, surely?!
  
  For a long period near the start of the story the nature of the predominately violent wannabe rulers meant the story was male dominated. Then Guinevere appears with her female thugs - and balance is restored. Even more so with the enchantresses that Merlin deals with. The language of the main protagonists, male and female, is violent and crude in places, so not for the faint hearted. But overall I found the writing to be of high quality, and included moments of reflection by many of the main characters. In fact characterisation was strong as a whole. Merlin veers between crude insults and deep, philosophical reflections. Arthur’s growth from a street hoodlum to a leader of men is well done. Lancelot as a Middle Eastern martial arts expert is an unexpected input but an interest in the Holy Grail and religious artefacts gives one explanation on why such an exotic warrior would anchor himself in the story. This bizarre background to Lancelot could have gone seriously wrong but somehow didn’t and he was, for me, one of the more interesting characters. I absolutely loved the use of a ‘cat familiar’ to one of the enchantresses to give a Fae POV, at one point in the story, of human activity and interactions with the Fae.
  
  There’s a strand of humour sometimes lurking just below the surface. For example, the moment the Green Knight is created from a woodland spirit into a human knight while simultaneously becoming sexually aroused in front of the other knights is hilarious.
  
  All in all, I’m impressed about how much this author has squeezed into this retelling of the Arthurian legend. It entertained me no end to see how the author chose to retell the main storyline, the core of which is unchanged from the traditional story (encompassing the rise and fall of Arthur, the liaison between Guinevere and Lancelot, etc.).
  
  I’d never heard of the author before but saw a reference to this book by Daniel Polansky whose dark fantasy, The Low Town series, I really enjoyed. This standalone book absolutely makes me want to know more about this author’s other works. A clear 5* as it kept me fully engaged and entertained, and is just so different and imaginative a take on such a traditional story.
• 
  Mike

  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 story of Arthur’s rise and he began with, “As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a knight…”)
  
  But if you’re going to do that kind of a story - taking a known story and applying the tropes of something else - you need to know what you’re doing. A good (bad) example of what I’m talking about is Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. I love Jane Austen, and I love zombies, but the two together fell flat for me. Mr Collins being too stupid to realize that Charlotte is a zombie, Lady Catherine’s sneering contempt for Elizabeth being trained in the martial arts by a Chinese master instead of a respectable Japanese sensei - they were worth a chuckle, but didn’t have enough to it to make the story worth the reading. A good (good) example is Sunshine by Robin McKinley: the Beauty & the Beast fairytale retold as a vampire story. McKinley didn’t just take a known story and swap some of the tropes: she really worked to make a new spin on the tale. She didn’t just tell Beauty & the Beast and replace “the last rose petal” with “the last clove of garlic,” if you know what I’m saying.
  
  By Force Alone has Arthur going from street urchin to local gang leader to capo di tutti i capi of the assorted Londinium gangsters knights. He controls the Londinium brothels, he’s dealing psychedelic drugs to the worshipers of Mithras, he calls for a meeting of the Five Families six kings of Britain to follow his leadership, setting off a war when they refuse. But this kind of thing can only sustain a story so far, and when the author runs out of Martin Scorcese and Francis Ford Coppola movies he kind of … reaches.
  
  We have a Lancelot that’s a kind of kung-fu assassin/treasure hunter. We have what I can only call a tribute to the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games. We have aliens for some reason, even more out of place here than in the fourth Indiana Jones movie. By the time the author tries to pull it back to a solemn tone for the inevitable fall of Camelot, it’s just such an absurd tonal shift from everything else that I just didn’t buy any part of it.
  
  I didn’t appreciate how this book handled gender. In the early stages the only mention of women at all was as serving wenches who were literally listed alongside livestock in the spoils of a captured castle. We do meet Igraine (who gets raped by Uther in disguise, of course), and Morgan and Morgause and Nimue and assorted Fae ladies (who are all seductresses, of course). Guinevere seems like an attempt to balance things - she’s a highwaywoman leading a merry band of lady robbers. But we get one brief sequence where she’s a character, and then she mostly exists in the mind of Lancelot as a distraction when he’s treasure hunting and kung-fu fighting.
  
  This was published by Tor (thanks to them and NetGalley for the ARC), which surprised me. Because this is really a book in need of a good editor.
• 
  Andreas

  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 just play (like the power struggle between Merlin and Morgana) or showing everyone off as dumb and stupid.
  
  I am really curious about the part with the Grail or the role of Guinevere but for now it's too much and I don't enjoy it. I will continue when the unpleasant reading experience has faded.
• 
  Denise

  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.
• 
  Hazem Walid

  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 but I was not connecting with the character at all.
  - The story has some weird element the other place (beyond the wall was it called?) was just a very big hallucination trip that I love but sometimes that I didn't understand what was happening.
  - The style of writing has its ups and downs too, because of the way the author chose to tell the story but in some parts, it reminds me of one of my favorite authors [[Joe Abercrombie.]]
  
  They don’t think of the implications! To go to war, someone has to hire cooks! Maintain discipline, make sure the roads are clear after the rains, ensure provisions, medical supplies, lines of communication— Arthur thinks it’s just like in the old days, when they were boys when all you needed for a fight was a knife and a yard, and somewhere to stash the bodies after.
  
  - Characters, as a whole, weren't the focus of the book but some of them were very good Merlin( we can say he is the lead character of the novel?), Kay and Lancelot, in my opinion, were the best characters and I think Arthur was merely at the novel.
  
  He knew what he was: a parasite on the body politic – from the Greek: literally, a person supping at another’s table. That’s what he is, that’s what being a knight is. They are like leeches, feasting on the toil of those who can’t take the cure, who can’t fight them. They bleed the populace, the tenth tithe at a time, just enough not to kill them, just enough to keep them working. He knows what he is. And there’s a power in knowing your true self. Lancelot has no illusions, not anymore.
  
  - This novel seems like the Guy Ritchie movie (King Arthur: Legend of the sword) in some way or another and I love that movie so when I feel the similarities come, I love it.
  - So in the end, the novel has some provoking ideas about the idea of [[power]]
  
  There is so much life in him, and so much power, or the potential for power still. This is what the Lady wants, this is why Merlin serves him. They feed on power as leeches feed on blood.
  
  It is at that moment when his fingers close on the hilt of the sword and he pulls it out of the stone that he knows he would be king. Not by divine right or by a line of descent. By force alone. and how the legend is formed and why.
  
  And always remember what is a king but the last guy to take power
• 
  Oleksandr Zholud

  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 which fell into decay, governed by gangs, who title themselves knights. Young Arthur is a part of a racketeer gang, but he gets a whiff about a drug deal about o happen and robs dealers both of the drugs (Goblin Fruit, ‘Some sort of rye infected with a fungus’) and money, starting his own gang and drug distribution. It is stressed constantly, that kings are made not by inheritance or magic or wisdom, but by force alone:
  
  It is at that moment when his fingers close on the hilt of the sword and he pulls it out of the stone that he knows he would be king. Not by divine right or by line of descent.
  
  By force alone.
  
  As story progresses, we get a point of view of Merlin (who is really half fae and feeds from power), Lancelot and others. Lancelot is a homage to kung-fu action movies, from his description Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart, Initiate of the Inner Circle of the Venerated Secret Brotherhood of the Seekers of the Grail, Master of the Flying Sword, the Aurochs’ Charge and the Judean Lightning Strike, traveling swordsman and powerful practitioner of the ancient art of gongfu, who fights by doing some learnt moves like Solomon’s Tent or Pharaoh’s Chariot. He is also a Nubian prince…
  
  There is a star that fell from the skies, and its material is used in fake gold (maybe a homage to cursed gold in
  Glory Road), there is the Zone, which borrows more from Tarkovsky’s movie Stalker and less from the original Strugatskys’
  Roadside Picnic, there is a search for Holy Grail and extraterrestrials, magic and mixing of history from different centuries (just like the original mythos, which used medieval feudal setting for the 4th century Britain).
  
  The safe house’s off King Lud’s Gate and the adjacent cemetery. Kay’s still uneasy. Night is fallen and the witching hour’s sure to soon be struck. The others wait for them, Tor and Geraint, and Elyan the White and Owain, the Bastard. The only piece of furniture they have is an old driftwood-crafted rickety round table. They fall on the package. With crude utensils they cut the merchandise, divvying up the pure Goblin Fruit, mixing and cutting in bowls.
  
  The Roman soldiers brought it over, originally. Some sort of hallucinatory substance they called kykeon and used in the Mithraeums. A Mithraeum was a temple to Mithras, some old Persian god who liked to slay bulls. Really it was just a sort of officers’ club, where the men got together in dark subterranean rooms to feast and booze. It was all proper religious and stuff. Then the Romans left, but some of the old boys remained behind one way or another and, well, it turned out lots of people liked the taste from a bite of what they started calling Goblin Fruit.
  
  In Londinium at present, everybody wants a little escape. Even those rich fucks who live upriver in Todyngton and Tuiccanham on their country estates beyond the tideway. Especially them.
  
  Problem is, it’s hard to get and, consequently, expensive. Which means the profit margin’s huge. There are Mithraeums everywhere, lots of demand—and never enough supply.
  
  So Arthur’s boys cut the fungus with flour and dried rosemary. They make several batches of different strengths, then package them into individual wrappers. Elyan the White’s in charge of mixing, Owain and Geraint package and wrap, Kay does the counting and the numbers.
• 
  Laura (crofteereader)

  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. But as a result I didn't find myself wanting to root for anyone and I was really just continuing on because the audiobook narrator was fantastic and the battle sequences were delightfully gory. Gore alone does not a good book make.
  
  {Thank you Macmillan Audio for the ALC - all thoughts are my own!}
• 
  Tim Hicks

  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?
  
  Yer Dark Ages were, well, dark and dreary and hardscrabbly for most. What if that group included the boys who became the Knights of the RT, and the girls who became queens and witches and wives? What if success came by force alone? How would you have to do things? Yep. Like this.
  
  Tidhar seems more confident in this book. There are long, lyrical sentences here, and gruff, nasty, brutish and short ones there. There's bawdy humour, and the most fun part is finding occasional quotes from other books (I wonder how many I missed).
  
  The plot's a bit muddy, and as always I lost track of all the female sorcerers, but most of all I'll remember this book for its energetic repetition of "don't make plans for your old age, bub."
  
  Oh yeah - the other question not covered in other Arthurian tellings is, "what if a spaceship had crashed in England back then?" Gives the author a lot of room for action ....
  
• 
  Maine Colonial

  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 greedy, violent warlords. Not only that, there are magical creatures, mostly malevolent, and otherworldly forces at work.
  
  Instead of a valiant noble, Arthur is a street rat, leader of a thieving, drug-dealing London gang, who ascends to power by force and connivance. The other famous names of Arthurian legend are here too, but not as you remember. Guinevere, for example, is the leader of a troupe of female warriors.
  
  This is a clever reimagining of the Arthur legend, and it is probably a truer depiction of the times than the legends paint them. It should find an appreciative audience, but it wore on me. Just too much of barbarians being barbaric, too much blood and gore, everybody out to scam, thieve and murder. The idea that the characters all speak in modern parlance, complete with the F and MF words, was amusing at the start, but the constant repetition grates.
  
  If you’re in the mood for what Tidhar has Lancelot refer to as an improbable adventure story, full of monsters and great wars and dangerous women, this could be just the ticket for you. Especially if you’d like that story to be mashed up with The Godfather.
• 
  Jacqie

  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 Guenivere was a bandit?
  
  That was fun, sure. It just wasn't as original as perhaps the author thought it was? At least to me. It's pretty clear that most stories, legends, myths, are propaganda trying to promote a political point of view- that's part of the purpose that stories have always served. And the Arthur myth is no different than most. It was used to push the sovereignty of England, it was used to promote the chivalry culture, it was used to justify conquest. So reading about Arthur as just another strongarm trying to gain and hold all he could wasn't shocking or even surprising. The myth itself is plenty dark, what with Arthur having been conceived through rape and Arthur ordering the murder of all infants born within a certain time frame because of a prophecy, what with Elaine killing herself because Lancelot didn't love her. Tidhar has written about teaching a class on Arthuriana and how that introduced him to the story behind the story. But this particular story misses a lot of opportunities.
  
  In this story Gawain isn't related to Agravain or any of the rest of his family. He's a scrapper in a land that's been infected by an alien energy given off by a comet, a little like Roadside Picnic. The grail/alien/comet thing was... different. It reminded me a lot of Vandermeer's Area X trilogy, where nothing is as it seems and nothing can even be understood.
  
  But Gawain. Why waste him in the scrapper role and isolate him from his family? Lot's children are a huge opportunity if you're trying to write Arthur as a crime story. What about the old enmity between Lot and Arthur and how it was overcome? What about Gawain hating Lancelot because of the role that Lancelot played in Gawain's brother Gareth's death, which affected the outcome of the final battle between Arthur and Mordred? That's some serious grief, vengeance and bitterness right there- seems like it would fit right in with an Arthur/mafia story.
  
  The love affair between Lancelot and Guenivere was wasted too. Lots of naming of characters and things that were superficially interesting, but that had no depth to them to make you care about what happened to the characters. In fact, we're probably supposed to find them pretty appalling. At the very end, the author suddenly tries to get all sentimental about knights going to their last battle, but up until then these very knights had been raping, pillaging, and just generally being horrible people, so sentimentality just wasn't what I felt about them.
  
  It wasn't as dark as it thought it was, and didn't say anything about the story that isn't baked right in there. There are a lot of Arthur books out there and I don't think this one will stand the test of time. I'm still not sure how I feel about Tidhar as an author. Osama was a punch in the gut, but this one did not pull my heartstrings.
  
  
• 
  Cristina

  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!
• 
  Micah Hall

  Crowning irreverence, by force alone
  
  4/5
  
  This 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 be had and moments to shake your head in disgust over how romanticized these legends are. You have a kung fu Jewish Lancelot (a highlight) and musings on entitlement to being a king (well drawn)...its just the balance that is hit or miss, as evidenced by those two examples alone.
  
  I have tons of quotes that I enjoyed in the book; A clear indicator that I got something from it. It's just missing that magic bit to pull it all together. Recommended.
• 
  Yariv

  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.
• 
  Paul

  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 may well be familiar with the stories that surround Camelot but By Force Alone interprets things just a little differently. Try to imagine some Guy Ritchie type gangster action playing out in the Dark Ages. Arthur is as much a crime boss as a king. Thinking about it, that maybe the whole point. As his life plays out, the author draws parallels between Arthur the young tearaway living fast and free on the streets of Londinium, and Arthur the monarch defining a country one sword stroke at a time. The only difference between running a gang of thugs and running a kingdom is the sense of scale.
  
  Arthur can be viewed almost like an addict, but his addiction of choice isn’t drugs, its power. He craves total control and is prepared to do anything in order to achieve it. Aloof and single-minded Arthur could not necessarily be described as a likeable soul. He is so consumed with his birth right he is oblivious to any other concerns. In many respects he becomes a secondary character in his own life. The world may revolve around the man destined to be king, but it is the actions and reactions of his friends and enemies that drive the narrative forward. Arthur is always there in the background, his presence is felt throughout, but the focus is on those who drift in and out of his orbit.
  
  It’s the thing I enjoyed most about By Force Alone, the characters. These are not the noble, steadfast, honour bound individuals you have met before. Tidhar has a deliciously skewed take on the Knights of the Round Table.
  
  Merlin is a slippery stoner type, imbued with a low animal cunning and a desire for knowledge above all things. Most of the time he views humanity with a morbid curiosity. Smarter than just about everyone in the room, the only thing he must contend with are the other members of his own dysfunctional otherworldly family.
  
  Lancelot is more mercenary than chivalrous knight. Killing is his business and business is good. Lancelot’s back story is a highlight. It basically involves a plethora of violence, all- encompassing obsession, and at one point some graphic bloodletting involving intestines. All this is before he has even made it to Camelot and Arthur’s side.
  
  Guinevere is a badass, she runs her own gang who are more than happy to kill, or maim, as long as it guarantees a decent payday. The dynamic between her, Arthur and Lancelot is explored in a particularly interesting way. I’ll say no more than that for fear of spoilers.
  
  This is not the version of Camelot you will be familiar with. Gone are the shining spires to be replaced by grimy whorehouses. Since the Romans exit from the country we’ve fallen on hard times. In many respects Arthur’s golden vision of a united nation is commendable but the reality is, putting it politely, a bit more earthy.
  
  There is an episodic air to each new chapter. As more characters are introduced, Gawain, The Lady of the Lake, the Green Knight etc the plot hits the key points of Arthur’s legends. As the plot reaches its climax, Tidhar proves he also has a keen eye for gripping action. The Battle of Camlann has a slow build, but when it all finally kicks off, there is a gleeful chaos to proceedings. Arthur’s ultimate meeting with Modred is as brutal as it is definitive.
  
  In the last decade of reviewing books, if you had forced me to pick a single book out of the hundreds I have read as a favourite up until By Force Alone, it would have been A Man Lies Dreaming also by Lavie Tidhar. Now I find I am burdened by indecision. A Man Lies Dreaming will always be close to the top of the list, but is it still number one? I’m not sure. I shouldn’t be in the least bit surprised that the same author could easily reinvent Arthurian legends so eloquently. The writing injects this little country’s collected mythology with a whip smart modern sensibility. By Force Alone is the rowdy bastard child of John Boorman’s Excalibur and Trainspotting*. It’s only March but I can already confidently predict that By Force Alone is going to be one of my favourite reads of 2020. If I could think of a rating higher than “highly recommended” then I would the using that to describe this book.
  
  *There is one specific passage that is undoubtedly a nod to everyone’s favourite skag-addled Scottish miscreants, Keep an eye out, you’ll know it when you see it.
• 
  Alex Sarll

  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 take, which is generally the least interesting form of revisionism; I saw maybe 30 minutes of that terrible Clive Owen film (and I like Clive Owen) which was trying to be Gladiator, then arrived in a market where Lord Of The Rings had blown Gladiator out of the water, and dear me but there are few things funnier than watching bad creative decisions taken for commercial reasons which then end up a commercial disaster too. Not to mention, if you go back to the early versions from Geoffrey and Wace and Layamon, we already have those brutal, stripped-back versions with little in the way of chivalry or romance, so creating a new one by back-formation feels a lot like translating something back into its original language. Why bother?
  
  Still, I thought I'd give it a go, because it's by Lavie Tidhar, and if I haven't loved everything I've read of his (The Bookman and I did not get on), he's written enough bangers that his intersection with one of my favourite themes deserved a look. Turns out I should have been paying more attention to another bit of the blurb: "This is the story of a land neither green nor pleasant. An eldritch isle of deep forest and dark fell haunted by swaithes, boggarts and tod-lowries, Robin-Goodfellows and Jenny Greenteeths, and predators of rarer appetite yet." This is not a story where all the magic turns out to be trickery, superstition and ergotism. Before Arthur is even conceived, we've had an ogre and the Questing Beast (a comparative deep cut who also put in an early appearance in Gillen & Mora's Once & Future – which might just be a curious coincidence but, as with Lancelot's eclipse of Gawain all those centuries ago, I feel there must be something more to it, and I wish I could put my finger on what). Oh, and Merlin's magic is very real. We meet him as a boy, meaning I naturally pictured the lad who was the best thing about The Kid Who Would Be King, the definitive young Merlin as surely as Excalibur's Nicol Williamson was the definitive adult one. And he knows some modern things, but he is very much not a modern man, nor even quite a man at all. Which is not to say that, even with real powers, a certain amount of showmanship and nous doesn't play just as much of a part in getting the desired result; Tidhar's treatment of the Sword in the Stone is a particularly fine weaving of all these components into something canny, funny, brutal – and yet still tinged with a certain majesty.
  
  The story begins with Uther toppling Vortigern, in a Britain which still bears traces of Roman civilisation but where everything is increasingly broken-down, tatty, reverting to savagery; Brexiteers tend to prefer Henry VIII's example to recalling our other, earlier departure from a common European project. This, though, this "stinking shithole of an island" collapsing into a squabbling, brutal, dirty mess - yeah, this feels emphatically once and future. I love the idea of Londinium's top hard man insisting he's the governor, as in Roman governor, and this being the origin of our hardman 'guv'nor', though I suspect philologists might dissent. This sets the tone for Arthur's rise, in which knights are essentially mobsters, with being knighted even being referred to as being made. It's an analogy that goes both ways, of course; even as you're saying that Bors and Agravaine are armed thugs, you're playing into the degree to which our culture, not least spandexphobe Martin Scorsese, has made noble figures out of gangsters – and indeed, there's one distinctly overdone riff on that Goodfellas speech, you know the one. Which isn't the only time the modern allusions slightly overdo it. But this is always the risk when you use the past (or future, for that matter) to talk about the present, and here it comes off nine times for every tenth it flops. There's a speech which manages to incorporate riffs on both Enoch Powell and Trainspotting. Guinevere is a Dark Ages girl gang take on Omar from The Wire. The Waste Land is inspired by Tarkovsky and Vandermeer, and I don't even want to give away Tidhar's take on Lancelot except to say it's fabulous. Does this sound like a ridiculous smorgasbord? Perhaps, but that's part of the point. Not just because I respect the audacity, but because the Matter of Britain was always a greedy myth, sucking other stories into its own orbit, adapting to the age, so in its own perverse way this is a sort of fidelity to that. Not to mention, it's a lot more interesting this way; compare and contrast Tidhar's Galahad, who as your basic 'This pure thing was actually horrible, aaah' revisionism, is probably the weakest link here.
  
  So yes: a story about how we appreciate power, and romanticise it. About how even the shittiest situation will become someone's good old days if given half a chance. It's a blasphemy against one of my most treasured myths, of course it is, but part of being fit to be allowed out in modern society is being able to respect the artistry on a good blasphemy, instead of reaching for the trigger or the Twitter. And fuck it, when everything else about Britain is being turned into its gimcrack nightmare reflection, what else are you meant to do with the national legend? It's just a pity there wasn't the lead time for Tidhar to drop "levelling up" and "unleashing Britain's potential" into the mix along with all the other hideous foreshadowings.
  
  (Netgalley ARC)
• 
  Stephen Aryan

  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.
• 
  Jersy

  An impressive, wild and kind of challenging fantasy novel, in the sense that I never knew what to expect and if I even entirely understood what's going on. The writing is stunning with a poetic flow but also vulgar and succinct: I loved it. The way Lavie Thidar subverts the Arthur myth but also embraces the nature of myth and magic is also really cool.
• 
  M.K.

  Full review is available
  on my website.
  
  In By Force Alone, Lavie Tidhar takes an ax to the Arthurian Legend and hacks it into pieces. Pieces that he then weaves into a bloody mess of gory awesome.
  
  Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher, I had the chance to read the book prior to its release on the 11th of August 2020. And let me tell you, it is not for the faint of heart. By Force Alone demands a lot from the reader, but what I think you need to do, above all, to go through this book is to keep an open mind.
  
  It is a wild ride, a breathless read that, combined with Tidhar’s rhythmic writing, left me frustrated but wanting to know more. At points, it felt like a montage of the Arthurian Legend from a Guy Ritchie's movie. Uther is a bloodthirsty rapist, Arthur is an ambitious gutter rat, Merlin’s a power-addicted weasel, Guinevere is a bandit, Lancelot is a kungfu master. And at some point, when you add all the other characters, your head can’t help but throb.
  
  By Force Alone generally follows the outline of the Arthurian Legend, but everything in between has been made ten times darker, violent, and bloody. The book is suitable for a specific type of readership that's not squeamish and likes a bit of gore and grime. It's admirable, pulling something like that off.
  
  The ton of underdeveloped characters I could hardly care about and how plot-driven everything was made me reduce my final rating. But given how much I hate plot-driven stories, it was an exciting plot-driven story. The fact that so many of the characters shared the same characteristics, ambitions, and cravings drove the point home and painted a great picture of a dark, cut-throat reality.
  
  I'd definitely recommend the book but to a specific sort of readership. If you're hoping to find a noble and romantic or an adventurous retelling of the Arthurian Legend, start digging your hopes a grave. This is a dark, a very dark and twisted spin of the story that's both absurd to hilarity and disturbing to the core.
• 
  Christopher Farnsworth

  I didn't want to let this one go. It's possibly my favorite of Lavie Tidhar's work so far, which is saying something. This is a brilliant blend of history, myth, and sheer, lunatic, inspiration that infuses new blood into the moribund tales of Arthur and Camelot. Tidhar creates a land abandoned by the Roman Empire, filled with mud and magic, giants and monsters, run by crooks and murderers. And in this place, a skinny kid from the streets of London will rise to rule everything, no matter what the cost. There is no chivalry here, or nobility, or shining armor. But there is humor and intelligence and, of course, a lot of stabbing. A wildly inventive ride through the story that gives shape to so many others, and a perfect take on the Arthurian legend for our time.
• 
  Anna Szabó

  This book was insane. INSANE. Epic, stellar. I can hardly find words to describe exactly how I feel.
  Who doesn’t know the story of Arthur and his knights of the Round Table? His love for Guinevere? Lancelot, Gawain. Merlin! I thought I do. But it turned out there are still some stories to tell. Wow wow wow
  
  I’m struggling with this review because I adored this story. I’ve read books about Arthur’s legend before but compared to By Force Alone those books seem less real, just less.
  
  Arthur, Merlin, Guinevere, Lancelot, Gawain and Uther are known to us but Tidhar shows their true faces somehow. Am I making sense? Probably not. They are vicious, brutal, selfish. How I love them all!
  
  Read this book.
  
• 
  David Harris

  I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance e-copy of By Force Alone via NetGalley.
  
  'If you expect Enlightenment to occur centuries hence you are sure to be disappointed'
  
  Well.
  
  Where can I even start with Tidhar's latest? There is so much to this book, it's hard to know where to begin. I'm tempted just to say you should buy it, and then sign off, but I need to do better than that.
  
  By Force Alone takes as its theme the life of King Arthur, previously invented, narrated, embroidered, reinvented, retold over hundreds of years and also subject to numerous quests for the "real" Arthur, the "real" truth. What we have is, then, another retelling, but a retelling shaped for the times, reflecting our early 21st century, late capitalist, preoccupations...
  
  ...as is every retelling of these stories.
  
  Tidhar summarises this process in an Afterword, which also puts the subject in its historical context, sketching what is known of the corresponding actual history of Britain in a period when it had broken from being part of a pan-European polity and had to make its own way in the world. That situation is, as best anyone can tell, the "real" background to Arthur, if there is such a thing - the post Roman period, from which few written records survive but which seems to have been foundational in producing what would later be called England. (One little quibble is the phrase 'The Dark Ages': just no!)
  
  In the course of this book Tidhar actually sketches a very convincing picture of this period, one in which Roman towns, infrastructure (roads, mines, aquaducts) and - though sketchily - political structures still survive, albeit decaying, and in which various local "bosses" survive, claiming various forms of legitimacy but all holding power, in the end, by force alone - a repeated mantra in this book. The former Roman provinces are divided into tenuous "kingdoms", based on geography, tribal allegiance and opportunity - both credible historically and reflecting the nature of the Arthurian tales which abound in petty kings.
  
  As the story proceeds, locations, which initially correspond to real places (Google some and you'll see) become vaguer, introducing legendary and possibly mythical places such as Camelot and Camlann. We are, then, moving from what is known, what can be inferred, into the mists of history. In keeping with that, we repeatedly see the impatience of rulers with mere practical questions such as how to keep the aqueducts working or supply food to the miners toiling in the - still just working - Roman gold-mines, and their immediate interest when it comes to hunting down groups of bandits or challenging each other for the top table. As we move into those mists, the sword's the thing, the trappings of civilisation fall away (though, how Merlin yearns for a decent library!)
  
  Entertainingly, Tidhar sets up a comparison between these rulers and organised crime syndicates: mafia language proliferates with knights being "made" men, the objectives of the bosses being trafficking, protectionism and prostitution, there is mention of the omnium ducibus dux, the bosses of all the bosses, 'the sort of offer you couldn't refuse' refuse, and so on. There is one scene where the mobsters, sitting in the street and eating olives as though on the Aventine, reflect on how things were done in the Old Country, from which their parents and grandparents came.
  
  The message is that this isn't the age of chivalry, Arthur's band of soldiers are not good Christian knights despite the many Sir thises and Sir that's (indeed, Christianity is a shadowy, somewhat marginal faith here). Nobody here is following a cause: Arthur's actions in seeking to unite Britannia (England isn't a thing yet) are all about getting, and enjoying power. 'He cares only that it is his commands that are obeyed, that on his word men live or die'. Merlin's, too, in supporting him - as a Fan, Merlin feeds on power. And Arthur's prepared to deploy populist rhetoric to achieve that ('They want our land. They want our wealth. They want our women', 'Like the Roman, I seem to see the Tiber foaming with much blood'). He's just like a - well, insert the name of your favourite lying populist demagogue, there are plenty to choose from. There are no principles here. 'It occurs to [Merlin] that this sort of patter will never quite fail. Perhaps in centuries hence this sort of crap would still light up people's hearts.'
  
  And if you recognised one of those quotes, it's because it comes from a 20th century English politician, not from Thomas Mallory or Geoffrey of Monmouth. Tidhar uses such anachronisms ruthlessly [more examples] and quite fittingly, given that the whole setup of knights in armour, castles, squires, chivalry and jousting which we associate with Arthur is itself totally anachronistic, dating from nearly a thousand years after the time of Arthur (if there ever was such a time).
  
  Equally fitting is the exploration here of the place of the Arthur myth in the national psyche - a myth which sits uneasily with the long accepted narrative of a state founded by Angle and Saxon invaders, given that Arthur is cast as one of the natives. (The dirty secrets of England's foundation is a subject ripe for fiction, that narrative of the triumphant incoming Germanic tribes long suited a culture seeking justification for an imperial destiny but doesn't sit so well in post-colonial times).
  
  Tidhar is absolutely the right person, I think, to carry out this exploration. Many of his recent books (for example, A Man Lies Dreaming and Unholy Land) reveal a fascination with pulp literature and its myth-making, whether that is intended or not. In a sense, the whole Arthurian cycle and the way it has developed, with its origin myths, reboots and team-ups - is the ultimate body of pulp literature, made up as it is of tales of heroes performing wildly improbably feats, created to satisfy the demand for brightly coloured exploits and coming to fruition when printing allowed mass distribution. I've no doubt there were worthies in 15th century England denouncing the influence of this trashy stuff on the young.
  
  In Tidhar's hands the latest rewrite of The Matter of Britain hits all the right notes and as ever with this writer, the breadth of cultural references is impressive and, again, impressively anachronistic. Tidhar evokes Shakespeare (often, but especially through the witches from Macbeth), Trainspotting ('Choose life. Choose a home. Choose a great big fat palace to stuff all your money in...'), Blade Runner ('attack ships on fire off the coast of Smyrna'), Gangs of New York ('Everybody owes and everybody pays, as the poet said' - appropriate, given how he sketches London), TS Eliot, 20th century myths such as the speculation of Erich von Daniken and much, much more.
  
  At the same time, all the familiar figures ands tropes are here: not only Merlin and Arthur, but the Round Table, Sir Pellinore and the Questing Beast (possibly the only two genuinely good and pure characters here), Kay and Hector as Arthur's foster family, the Nine Sisters (though here the 'ladies of the lakes and streams', still dispensers of swords, have become enthusiastic arms traders). Lancelot and Guinevere are here (though given exciting backstories: both are now kick-ass assassins, but while Guinevere is an ex-highwaywoman with her own girl gang, Lancelot - a Nubian - is a member of a mystic sect form Judea, trained in the ancient art of gongfu and ready to deliver such moves as 'the Monkey's Paw and the King in Yellow and the Turn of the Screw'.
  
  There is the Dolorous Stroke that wounds the King and inflicts sickness on the land. Tidhar puts his own emphasis on things - the Lancelot/ Guinevere thing is passed over in a few pages, the whole Grail Quest gets a completely different twist on it which I'm saying nothing about because it would spoil things
  
  The book also looks forward ('Perhaps... one day all of this land will speak in Anglisc, and they'll re-surface the old Roman roads and ride down them in horseless chariots, like dragons belching smoke...') ('As though swiping through images only she can see') and Tidhar's use of language sometimes shows the same place across time (for example 'The Romans' once-new castle on the Tyne' or the scenes in which Guinevere and her companions, travelling in the North East, seem to encounter coal smoke, the incessant din of industry and the flames of furnaces and forges.
  
  Overall, it is I think a dark take on the Arthurian material. A very dark take. I'm reminded of Michael Hughes' Country, which uses the Homeric narrative of the Trojan War to frame the story of the Troubles in Ireland. Both retellings use a familiar narrative to illuminate the present and both are stories of bloodshed and loss, with many dodgy protagonists. Both end in bloodshed and loss. But while Country manages to achieve some closure, the ending of By Force Alone is a devastating assassination of any cosy, nation-building mythicness that one might look for in the Arthurian cycle. Not only has Tidhar exploded the internal content of the cycle, substituting amorality and power lust for the chilly literary chivalry of the late Middle Ages but he's shown how that cycle will be appropriated by the victors from the losers (' The Angles and the Saxons are here to stay, dear Merlin... They'll tell this story and think it is about themselves it's told...') Another point of reference might be a story that ends with these words, from an earlier retelling: 'For Drake is no longer in his hammock... nor is Arthur somewhere sleeping, and you may not lie idly expecting the second coming of anybody now, because the world is yours and its is up to you. Now especially since man has the strength to destroy this world, it is the responsibility of man to keep it alive...'
  
  Another complicated, thought provoking and many-layered novel from Tidhar whose books are definitely a must-read for me, taking in a dazzling range of themes and perspectives.
• 
  RG

  To be fair I've recently been reading and watching a lot of Aruthain stories. So I could have just hit the wall..thiswas great for ablut 150-200 pages but then the satirical take with witty dialogue etc just became a little too repetitive for me. Good writing but by the end I felt like the plot meandered too much
• 
  Corey (grimdark_dad)

  By Force Alone is a compulsive & addictive read, for sure. The dialogue is frequently hilarious & gloriously profane. This is not a knights-in-shining-armor & damsels-in-distress kind of deal…this is the grimy, stabby, sexy, weird magic version of the Arthurian legend, and I was enthralled with it. This was just a fucking blast!
  
  Full review:
  
  
  https://grimdarkdad.wordpress.com/202...
• 
  Kerry Smith

  For some reason Goodreads is not allowing me to add stars. I'm giving this a 5 star rating.
  This is the Arthurian Legends as never told before. No perfect knights and heroes in this book; recall every telling you've heard or read before about each Knight and subvert him. This book has some excellent laugh out loud moments and I enjoyed every page
• 
  Chris Bauer

  This is one of the BEST books I've read in a long time for many different reasons. Lavie Tidhar has taken Arthurian canon and twisted it into an amazingly bizarre mashup of mafia literature, Otherworld/portal themes and good old fashioned tour de force writing. Just so many words and feels without the time to go into detail.
  
  First, the writing style is just about perfect in every sense. I've no idea how many drafts the author went through before the final product but it is flawless. Multiple perspectives with varying degrees of POV and reliability, in addition to a novel's worth of "expert driving on a closed course"
  
  Look. The simple fact is that this book on the Arthurian legend is unlike any you've ever read. If you have the slightest interest in the legend and appreciate top shelf writing, you will NOT be disappointed.
  
  Just an amazing book.
• 
  Michael

  Very, very clever.
  
  Tidhar revisits the well-established Arthurian legend in this reworking, but puts a contemporary spin on it, recasting Arthur and his court as gangsters, Guinevere as an assassin, digging into the mysticism of the Green Knight and the grail quest (by way of an extended Tarkovsky homage) and wrapping the whole thing up with a surprisingly credible view of how succession and politics could have worked in the era.
  
  What's brilliant about it is that he manages to do all of this whilst hitting all of the important points of the accepted legend - synthesising the different tellings of the story into a coherent whole. It's an amazing achievement, a very enjoyable piece of writing and will definitely be one of the best things I read this year.