I already had an experience in this series, its characters, and the story through the TV show, so starting The Last Kingdom gave me nostalgia and a sense of coming home. Thank you to HarperAudio for this audiobook in exchange for an honest review. That was what Ragnar had taught me, to take joy from the fight.”

This thrilling adventure-based on existing records of Bernard Cornwell’s ancestors-depicts a time when law and order were ripped violently apart by a pagan assault on Christian England, an assault that came very close to destroying England. Above all, though, he wishes to recover his father’s land, the enchanting fort of Bebbanburg by the wild northern sea. By now he is a young man, in love, trained to fight and ready to take his place in the dreaded shield wall. He certainly has no love for Alfred, whom he considers a pious weakling and no match for Viking savagery, yet when Alfred unexpectedly defeats the Danes and the Danes themselves turn on Uhtred, he is finally forced to choose sides. The story is seen through the eyes of Uhtred, a dispossessed nobleman, who is captured as a child by the Danes and then raised by them so that, by the time the Northmen begin their assault on Wessex (Alfred’s kingdom and the last territory in English hands) Uhtred almost thinks of himself as a Dane. This is the story of the making of England in the 9th and 10th centuries, the years in which King Alfred the Great, his son and grandson defeated the Danish Vikings who had invaded and occupied three of England’s four kingdoms.

The saxon chronicles in order