Sword of Avalon

Name: Sword of Avalon
Rating: 4.6 (325 reviews)

by Marion Zimmer Bradley Book 7 in the Avalon series.

First published 2009

Amazon

4.5(325)

At the end of the Bronze Age, the child Mikantor is hidden from the warlord Galid, who has seized power and fears the prophecy surrounding the Son of a Hundred Kings. Separated from Avalon’s protection and sold into slavery, Mikantor travels through Britain, Europe and the Aegean world before returning to challenge the ruler who displaced him.

His fate becomes bound to a master smith’s attempt to forge a new kind of sword and to Anderle, Lady of Avalon, whose visions connect political survival with sacred duty. The weapon that emerges will pass into legend as Excalibur, linking Bronze Age upheaval to the much later Arthurian tradition.

The Bronze Age framework links the legend of Excalibur to technological change. A superior blade matters because metallurgy determines the weapons a community can produce and therefore the military advantage it can sustain. The novel turns the forging process into both sacred act and political innovation, imagining how a real shift in metalworking might later survive in cultural memory as the story of a unique sword.