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Rating: 
Summary: Worse than you can imagine
Review: I feel Jack Whyte did and excellent job on this book. He had the almost impossible task of making a story out of something already covered pretty well in The Eagles Brood. He also does something alot of writers fail to do, he makes the characters human. They have strengths and weaknesses, they make mistakes and act on impulse. Not everyone on the good side is a champion and not everyone on the opposing side is horrible. Take Nemo, she is a rather unintelligent girl who worships Uther. She makes all her decisions good or bad because of how SHE percieves things. This dissapoints alot of people because the characters do things that go against the "typical" behaviour of the group or person. This make the book exciting, you never have a real idea of what could happen although you know the inevitable ending. I think that what was the real hard thing to accept. The author spends all of the book making you like Uther more and more, and to know what happens makes it that much more painful. Despite that I think the book was well written, and I believe he will continue to impress us with his writing in the future.
Rating:
Summary: Worse than you can imagine
Review: I find the praise for this book contained in many of these reviews to be absolutely inexplicable. I don't care whether it was historically accurate--Arthur is a legend, after all. I actually like sex and violence, so I have no problem with that. What I don't like are cardboard characters, lame story-lines, hackneyed plots. To me it doesn't matter whether Whyte knows how swords were made in late Roman Britain. What matters is that he should convince me that he knows. He fails utterly. This is a hodgepodge of lame action sequences and a tedious Horatio Alger story--the veteran protagonist conveniently discovers whatever he needs buried somewhere whenever he needs it...mixed with a bit of weird survivalist myth which presumably foreshadows the dark ages to come. The central love relationship of the book is so simplistic and poorly imagined as to be insulting to the reader. What kind of writing are this books fans used to reading? Weekly World News? I'm not saying that this couldn't make decent entertainment for early teens, but compared to solid and entertaining Arthurian stuff like Bradley's Mists of Avalon or Attanasio's series or Gillian Bradshaw's series? Or several others? In no way does Whyte breathe life into the characters or the era which he so thinly imagines. About the only thing you can say good about this book is that you can get through it in a few hours, typical of books with such poor derivative prose and hackneyed story lines. A good thing it's a quick read--about the only thing about Arthur that's even hinted at in this book is the ORE which may be used to make Excalibur. Great suggestion that because Whyte skips magic--funny since magic always seemed kind of important in Arthur legends--this should be treated as historical fiction. Big deal. He's just as pathetic in comparison to great historical fiction like Patrick O'Brien, Dorothy Dunnett, or Alfred Duggan as he is in comparison to great or even just decent fantasy writers(Duggan actually did a much more sophisticated and thoroughly imagined real-historical-Arthur novel). If you are over 13 and/or read a book a month, you should stay away from this shlock.
Rating: 
Summary: Dreck
Review: I loved Jack Whytes first 2 books. This was horrible. I majored in journalism and creative writing and this book seemed almost as if it was written by someone else....perhaps a 15 y.o. who's been spending too many hours pouring through Penthouse. Anyway, what a disappointment. I was ready to recommend this series to my son but cannot now. I also notice some other negative reviews that have been submitted, (which I should have heeded) have been removed so buyer beware. Perhaps Amazon is removing negative reviews to sell more of this garbage.
Rating: 
Summary: Publius, Merlyn, or Uther???
Review: I would like to start by saying that I enjoy this series immensely. The historical aspects of the story fascinate me, and while I enjoy the Arthurian legends from the traditional "fantastical" telling, I find that the story is equally enjoyable with a little "reality" injected. All that aside, I feel that where Whyte falls short as a story teller is that it is difficult to tell one narrator from the next. One can close one's eyes and imagine Publius, or Merlyn, or Uther having the same thoughts in any given situation presented in the novels. They're all so damn reasonable!!! This was not such a big deal with Publius and Merlyn. They were both products of a civilized Roman or nearly Roman upbringing. However, I was REALLY disappointed in Uther. Whyte would make passing references to Uther's "Dark Rages", but only very rarely does the reader get to view Uther doing anything truly rash or unreasonable. Even in the traditional legend, the character of Uther is a dark one. Whyte missed the boat in trying so hard to exonerate Uther, and make him more likable.
Rating:
Summary: Doesn't Quite Measure Up
Review: In Uther, Jack Whyte attempts to tie up all the tantalizing threads that he left dangling at the end of The Eagle's Brood. He does his best to explain the enigma of Uther, solve the mystery of Deirdre's brutal murder, and clarify the vague circumstances of Arthur's parentage. He makes a valiant effort, but comes up short. It isn't a dismal failure. Jack Whyte is, after all, a remarkable writer. But it's difficult to write yourself out of a corner, and he'd boxed himself in pretty tightly at the end of Eagle's Brood. What he gives us here is at least one new character, Nemo, who is almost completely unsympathetic and whose actions are utterly bizarre and incomprehensible despite Whyte's efforts to provide good motivation. As for Uther, Whyte has only limited success at demystifying his erratic personality, mostly because the author is forced to use the third person in order to tell this part of the tale. His previous books, which are first person narratives, are much more immediate and visceral. There are other disappointments, as well. The love scenes are painful reading, but mercifully short. Whyte's battle scenes, although written with the same painstaking detail as in previous books, are difficult reading here. The outcome is a given, and the slow progress of Uther's troops is laborious and layered in dread. This is one time where I would have appreciated a little less detail. What does the author do right? He immerses us, once again, in a world that is brutal and black and frightening, and that strikes this reader, anyway, as utterly realistic. Against that backdrop he sets human beings who are trying to make sense of it all, trying to create a civilization out of chaos. In this book, as in all the others, he takes myth and roots it firmly in history. It's a worthy effort, just not his best.
Rating:
Summary: Not enough juice!
Review: Jack Whyte's books are my second favourite series of all time (which is saying a lot), and I was very excited for the opportunity to really know the other "Prince of Camulod," Uther. The realistic interpretation of the Arthurian legend and its ingenious development I find much more satisfying than the endless and widely varied fantastical interpretations, but maybe that's just the historian in me. Also being female, I always felt that the "juiciest" parts of the series were the powerful and romantic male characters and their relationships with one another, especially Merlyn (Cay) and Uther who are aptly described as "different sides of the same coin." One was the Romanized heir to Camulod; one the darker (in every sense of the word) Celtic prince. In the series, Merlyn's life and person is explored thoroughly and satisfyingly, and I was glad it was Uther's turn to live through the grand and tragic events of his very different life. In the previous books he was always a brooding and enigmatic counterbalance to Merlyn's clean nobility, and Uther's story was obviously fertile ground for more of Whyte's beautiful character developments. I expected Uther would have twice the personality of Merlyn, and that his famous rages and conflicts would be delved into in much more detail, especially in the area of his friendship with Cay and his feelings towards his parents, both of which are hinted at but only touched upon in this book. If Cay were his bosom companion, and his parents a Celtic king and a Roman lady, I would think that Uther would have much more to dwell upon than the fact that Camulod was a nicer place to live. We should have seen the mirror image of Cay's relationship with Uther, which would also give more insight into Cay for the benefit of the rest of the series, and a contrasting gritty feel for the inner life of a native Celt. The latter was explored a little but not enough. However for those who deplore the casual references to sex, well, that would be part and parcel of such a life, and a welcome change from the demure mystical romance of other Arthurian tales. Whyte has never pulled his punches to satisfy our post-Victorian sensibilities, and I'm glad he didn't start here.
I understand that the subject of Camulod itself need not be rehashed, but I was dissapointed that we really DIDN'T get to know, in the grand tradition of this series, how Uther really felt and how these important people affected his life as an adult. The elaborate opening chapter dealing with Veronica was almost wasted. As well, it was never really explained how, since Cay spent half his childhood with his Pendragon relations, they later considered him a suspicious stranger. Or how a Pendragon king would allow his only son to spend most of his life away from the people he would one day lead. Although I enjoyed the book, like a lot of people I wished there was less anthropological detail and more exploration of Uther's volatile personality and love life - this book could have been exploding with Uther's charm and danger. I thought Nemo a fascinating character, but found it odd that she never batted an eye over being punished by her beloved Uther, or that Uther never used her devotion, therefore creating tragic (on her part) conflicts.
If Uther portrayed in earlier books as "mad, bad, and dangerous to know," we never get to fully realize why, or how tied into Cay's life he was. So in conclusion, this was a good and much appreciated book, but it lacked the romance and depth of its predecessors, when it should have been the most tragic and romantic of them all. Uther was supposed to have been a blazing star falling towards a sad destiny, but this book only lets us catch a few glimmerings of his descent.
Rating:
Summary: Too much Anthropology, not enough History
Review: Note that I read this book completely unaware that it was part of a series. (indeed, nowhere on the cover does it say "Book 7 of the *** Series" or whatever). So this review will judge "Uther" as a standalone novel and some of my comments may therefore be off the mark, had I read the preceeding six titles. I am a great fan of historical fiction, especially of the classical and Roman eras. So a novel that treats Arthurian Britain within its historically correct context of the immediatelly post-Roman times held great promise for me. What I expected was 'realistic fiction', that would interprete the popular story in more pragmatic terms. In some ways, "Uther" does this quite admirably; in others it fails - quite unecessarily also. For some reason, the author seems to prefer anthropology to history. He will spend pages upon pages describing in exhaustive detail how a lone cavalry scout sets up camp for the night, cataloguing their equipment and methods of manufacture, their reasons for selecting a particular site, their procedures for starting a fire or storing their weapons overnight, the weave of their cloak, the hobling of their horse, the sounds of the rain on the leaves.. And then, two pages later he will summarise a couple of major battles, a fatal injury to one of the most important characters and a political decision that will shape the future of Britain for centuries, all quite literally within the span of two-three paragraphs. By the end of the book I was smiling and thinking "Jack Whyte, father of Anthropological Fiction, a whole new genre of litterature". This complete disregard for historical considerations spans the length of the book. The "macro"-view is constantly sacrificed for micro-detailing. The story suffers for it too. Because when the time comes to advance the story-arc, the reader (along with the author) totally lacks any social/economical background that would explain the protagonists' actions or the political developments. So mr Whyte has to continuously pull proverbial rabbits out of his hat. For example, when failing to present a believable scenario on how an advanced culture, with the benefit of Roman administration, technology and military organisation (Camulod + Cambria) could possibly be threatened by anyone within primitive non-Roman Britain (yet in need of strife for the purposes of his story), he magically produces a whole series of invading mercenary armies from Scotland, Ireland, Germany and beyond, all of which are supposedly, somehow being financed, fed and organised by a backwater ruler of an infertile little peninsula (Cornwall). The book's ending is similarly unimaginative and equally disappointing. Jack Whyte simply has all significant active characters killed. Some of them even manage to kill each other, even though they were leagues apart and avoiding contact just a few pages before! Mind you, I kept reading, all the way to the end. Because even as I was failing to accept the story, the backdrop itself was trully wonderful, detailed and well researched and it kept me immersed. So, inspite my misgivings, É would probably still recommend reading it. Think of it this way: if "Uther" were a movie, Jack Whyte would have been an amazing set designer or perhaps the creative assistant; but he would definatelly not have been the writer or the director. Reading this novel you will not learn why Britain evolved the way it did, but you will definatelly learn what it looked like 1,700 years ago.
Rating:
Summary: Not as good as the rest
Review: The good: Whyte does a good job of taking out the mystical in the Arthur legend and giving it a historical basis.
The bad: The book is longer than it needs to be, almost to the point of boring the reader, too much space is spent describing events that have no relevance to the story.
The ugly: Whyte's many descriptions on how his characters "rut" or "bed" with each other. These scenes have no relevance to the story and are inappropriate. I found myself skipping over these scenes.
The bottom line: Taking the time to dig through the irrelevant details and sex scenes isn't worth it. This is the last Whyte book I'll ever read.
Rating:
Summary: ACK! It tricked me!
Review: This book epitomizes why I do NOT read series. And, even though it is listed on Amazon.com as part of the "Camulod Chronicles", the book cover itself does not indicate that it is a book in a series. This book could have benefited from some serious editorial input. At one point, the text speaks of Uther's mother as 'dead' when in fact it is Merlyn/Cai's mother who is dead. Very disconcerting. Especially since the author likes to play the 'in medias res' card so often, introducing an event or character and then going back to fill in the details up to the point this event/character is mentioned. The Author assumes, of course, that the reader has read every other book in the series, and does not bother to re introduce characters or even put in more than a cursory description of some characters. So when they do something or say something that the series-reader would completely understand, the non-series reader goes 'huh?' Similarly, digressions and movements backwards in time to show how the character first met the main character, Uther, are rather jarring and not really helpful in advancing the plot. In one paragraph, Uther will be 15 and within months of his manhood rituals. 2 chapters later he will be 17 and not yet considered a man by his clan. Which is it? And why should we care? Additionally, there are not enough place details given to really distinguish Cambria and Camulod in the readers mind. No real descriptions of buildings, daily life, and other details that might make it more interesting. No real idea of how the two places are related in space, what the journey between one and the other may entail, etc. Sure, Camulod is Roman, and the people wash, but that's about all I know about it from reading _Uther_. The Arthurian legends are a rich source of material, a powerful collection of archetypes, and I do not fault Mr. Whyte at all for wanting to play in the sandbox, but I do fault his editors for not encouraging Mr. White to follow a timeline and watch the relative ages of the characters in relation to the plot and the births/deaths/events of the rest of the book. Very disappointing. I won't be trying to play catch-up by reading the previous books in the series.
Rating: 
Summary: Read it for what it is...
Review: What Uther does for the series is what J.R.R.Tolkein's, The Silmarillion, did for the Lord of the Rings. It's a collection of contextual notes and thoughts the author had lying around that answers some questions and enriches the history of his series (my explanation for why it is written in the person it is written in). Unforunately, its release is very untimely and I am willing to bet that it has something to do with money and the publishers. Although that is pure speculation. I can't divine any other reason why Whyte would release this book which is more of an appendix to the storyline, UNLESS, unless he had to tell Uther's side of the story before going on with Arthur's. We can only hope. Sadly, while the information it divulges is really enlightening, it disrupts the beautiful magic and engaging story that Whyte had woven up to that point. I encourage people just starting in on the series to not read it until after the main story is finished. Some author's don't realize that often the most engaging part of a story are those parts left untold. Those deeds and tails left to the readers imagination form some of the greatest ties between story and reader when left to our speculation. In that sense I almost wish I hadn't read Uther at all, but then I love to read so there is no way I could have restricted myself even knowing what I know now. To the reviewer who was upset that this was an installment in a series... well, I for one don't understand how someone fails to enjoy the complexity that can only come from a story written over several volumes. The best TV shows, movies, video games, and books are all parts of series. And if you didn't want to read a book in a series there are literally dozens of indicators on the cover, in the first pages, and in the acknowledgments virtually shouting at you that this is part of series and should be considered that way. And as a personal note, I thoroughly dislike author's that demean the intelligence, committment and attention spans of their readers by using up large portions of successive volumes retelling the story and explaining character profiles. I can understand the need for a quick summary in a t.v. show where someone might have missed an episode due to some other committment but the need utterly fails in regard to books and even movies. I have read just about every spin-off of the Authurian Legend that has been written (Mary Stewarts (fantastic), Stephen R. Lawhead's (mostly good), T.H.White's (inventive)),and countless other minor variations and Jack Whyte's telling is by far my favorite of them all. He has the amazing ability to make the legend's seem like very real people and after the reading is through restore them properly to their legendary status. The series comes highly recommended even if Uther seems rather out of place. Enjoy.
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