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While The Magicians dealt with a group of characters just starting out in life, Grossman noted that he’s playing with people at different points in their lives. "At the same time, it's a huge canvas, very much on the epic scale, and the characters are in different parts of their lives from where the Brakebills magicians were. Some of them are middle-aged or even, in the case of Merlin, really really old." That said, fans of his earlier novels will recognize Grossman in his work: "In some ways, it's very much in the style of The Magicians. It's my voice. And it's still fantasy, filtered through a lens very much like the one that made The Magicians. If you liked The Magicians, there's a lot more of that in The Bright Sword."Grossman told The Verge that he has spent the last year and a half writing the novel. "It's a longer book than any of the Magicians books, and unlike those books, it incorporates a huge amount of research, from late pre-Roman Iron Age British culture to the nitty-gritty of medieval longsword combat, which we know a lot more about now than we did in T.H. White's time."

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Magicians trilogy returns with a triumphant reimagining of the King Arthur legend for the new millennium

A gifted young knight named Collum arrives at Camelot to compete for a spot on the Round Table, only to find that he’s too late. The king died two weeks ago at the Battle of Camlann, leaving no heir, and only a handful of the knights of the Round Table survive.

They aren’t the heroes of legend, like Lancelot or Gawain. They’re the oddballs of the Round Table, from the edges of the stories, 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. Together this ragtag fellowship will set out to rebuild Camelot in a world that has lost its balance.

But Arthur’s death has revealed Britain’s fault lines. God has abandoned it, and the fairies and monsters and old gods are returning, led by Arthur’s half-sister Morgan le Fay. Kingdoms are turning on each other, warlords lay siege to Camelot and rival factions are forming around the disgraced Lancelot and the fallen Queen Guinevere. It is up to Collum and his companions to reclaim Excalibur, solve the mysteries of this ruined world and make it whole again. But before they can restore Camelot they’ll have to learn the truth of why the lonely, brilliant King Arthur fell, and lay to rest the ghosts of his troubled family and of Britain’s dark past.

The first major Arthurian epic of the new millennium, The Bright Sword is steeped in tradition, full of duels and quests, battles and tournaments, magic swords and Fisher Kings. It also sheds a fresh light on Arthur’s Britain, a diverse, complex nation struggling to come to terms with its bloody history. The Bright Sword is a story about imperfect men and women, full of strength and pain, who are looking for a way to reforge a broken land in spite of being broken themselves.