Byline: CANDAS JANE DORSEY

The Eagle

By Jack Whyte

Viking Canada, 687 pages, $35

Jack Whyte dedicates The Eagle, the last volume in his remaking and Romanization of the Arthurian cycle, to his wife Beverley, "who, after more than a quarter century of living with the Res Britannica, has mixed feelings about cleaning out the vaults and moving on to other fields." It's possible that he should have listened to Beverley's reluctance -- just a little bit.

The Eagle is the second in the two-volume valedictory to Arthur narrated by Clothar the Frank, Arthur's good friend from Gaul who earns the nickname Lance for his javelin-throwing. Whyte began with The Skystone and went on to pen seven more books before The Eagle, tracing Arthur's lineage from a sturdy group of forebears, made up of both Romans who remained in Britain by choice and Romanized Britons who understood the advantages of peace, prosperity, Roman roads, good neighbours and excellent cavalry.

All nine books are characterized by high readability, good research presented painlessly, and fast action by men and women of action -- and make no mistake, the women show as well as the men, including in swordplay and javelin-throwing, whether their roles require it or not. The result is a fascinating chronicle devoid of magic, sorcerers, enchantresses and the Lady of the Lake, but chock-full of believable alternatives.

I somehow completely missed Clothar the Frank, this book's precursor, so I dived into The Eagle eagerly, believing I would be immediately brought up to speed, and I was not wrong. The beginning of the novel has all of the elements that made Whyte's normalization of Camelot (herein yclept Camulod) so pleasantly addictive: meticulous research into the era...