Iconoclastic, provocative, hugely entertaining. A historical novel with a difference – as you'd expect from the award-winning author of Osama and Central Station.
Lavie Tidhar is the World Fantasy Award-winning author of Osama (2011), The Violent Century (2013), the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize-winning A Man Lies Dreaming (2014), and the Campbell Award-winning Central Station (2016), in addition to many other works and several other awards. His latest novels are the Locus Award nominated Unholy Land (2018) and debut children's novel Candy (2018). He works across genres, combining detective and thriller modes with poetry, science fiction and historical and autobiographical material. His work has been compared to that of Philip K. Dick by the Guardian and the Financial Times, and to Kurt Vonnegut's by Locus.
[An] extraordinary and vivid retelling of our national myth. Gritty
revisionism is super-charged by the supernatural... As eclectic as
the Sword in the Stone and as ruthless as A Game of Thrones, this
retelling of the whole Arthurian legend stands alongside the very
best'
*Daily Mail*
A twisted Arthur retelling mixing the historical and the magical
with a very modern eye. Brutal and vicious, funny, Peaky Blinders
of the Round Table
*Adrian Tchaikovsky, author of Cage of Souls and Dogs of War*
Lavie Tidhar has created something wonderful, an extraordinary
blend of history, legend, and sheer, lunatic inspiration. I loved
it
*Christopher Farnsworth, author of The Eternal World and
Killfile*
A violent, funny, absurd epic – Tidhar remains an utterly original
voice in contemporary fiction
*Daniel Polansky, author of Low Town and The Builders*
Drawing on everything from wushu movies to The Wire by way of
Tarkovsky and Tarantino, By Force Alone is wild, surprising and
entertaining, and a hugely immersive read
*MR Carey, author of The Girl with All the Gifts and The
Unwritten*
You can always trust Lavie Tidhar to create something brilliant,
savage and endlessly entertaining
*Starburst*
Lavie Tidhar has crafted a punk epic on the mouldering bones of
legend and jolted it to life with ten thousand volts of knowing wit
and fury. By Force Alone eviscerates the complacent posturing of
the Arthurian myth, explodes the well-worn conventions of the tale
and from the shiny jagged pieces assembles a wholly fresh
rollercoaster ride of cheap violence, vicious magic and messy human
truth
*Richard Morgan, author of Altered Carbon*
Utterly bonkers, utterly brilliant – a brutal, witty and slightly
insane deconstruction of the Arthurian legend by way of Goodfellas,
this is absolute bloody (and sweary) joy on the page'
*Russel D McLean, author of The Good Son and Ed's Dead*
A beautifully written and thrilling tale, soaked in gore and
evocative historical detail, peppered with subtle humour. Tidhar
storms the castle of Grimdark, sword dripping with blood, and makes
a claim for its crown
*Angus Watson, author of Age of Iron and You Die When You Die.*
A comet that blazes a brilliant new path through dusty old
territory. Bold and inventive, it smashes Arthurian myth to bits,
sweeps up the brightest, weirdest, most enchanting pieces, and
reshapes them into a wildly original tale. Legend has it that King
Arthur will return when he's most needed, and this Arthur – this
flawed, ambitious, irreverent boy-kingpin – is exactly the one we
need now
*Lisa L Hannett, author of Bluegrass Symphony and Lament for the
Afterlife*
Everyone is a bastard here, from Guenevere to Arthur to Merlin; I
have never come across a more despicable bunch of characters, this
is surely an indictment of Lavie Tidhar's warped and degenerate
brain. Without a doubt this is the best Arthurian tale ever
written, it has ruined the entire mythology for me
*Saad Z Hossain, author of Escape From Baghdad! and Djinn City*
A New Weird Britain take on Arthurian mythos... It's an immense
remix of the myth, done with an extremely ruthless eye. Lavie is an
extremely clever writer'
*Warren Ellis*
A bloody, bravura performance, which Tidhar pulls off with graphic
imagery and modern vernacular... By Force Alone is Tidhar's
scatological contribution to the field of Arthurian romance, a
salutary antidote to the more romantic glossings of recent modern
fantasy'
*Guardian*
At a time when many in a fractious, divided Britain are looking to
the past for comfort, Tidhar seeks to remind us – in dizzying,
profane fashion – that our nation was, like so many others, built
on nothing more romantic than bloodshed and conquest
*Financial Times*
Every new book by the fiendishly ingenious and canny Tidhar is so
radically different from his previous ones that I always await the
next with bated breath... The result is stunningly unique and the
way he threads his daring if not sacrilegious additions into the
fabric of the Camelot tale is like a punch in the gut...
Uproarious, provocative and utterly gripping'
*Crime Time*
In true Lavie Tidhar style, we get something much more
entertaining, bizarre and fantastical... If you're looking for
something riotously, uncompromisingly graphic and frenzied, then
this book well certainly stand out from the crowd'
*SF Crowsnest*
Iconoclastic, provocative, poetic and profane. King Arthur
re-imagined – as you'd expect from the author of A Man Lies
Dreaming and The Violent Century as well as the World Fantasy
Award-winning Osama and the Locus Award short-listed Central
Station
*Concatenation*
London-based Israeli author Tidhar's latest fantasy is a ferocious
and often very funny reinvention of the King Arthur myth, taking in
references from Tolkien to Brexit
*iNews*
Plunging a broadsword into the heart of Arthurian legend, Tidhar's
novel depicts the Knights of the Round Table as a bunch of sweary,
sweaty thugs. So much for the glories of a magical, mythical past.
Britain, it seems, has forever been a land of factional infighting,
presided over by a brutal, uncaring elite
*Financial Times*
A highly original take on Arthurian legend featuring aliens, a
radioactive no-go area, a dragon sighting and the hunt for the
Grail
*SFX Magazine*
Quite simply, By Force Alone is brilliant, thought-provoking
entertainment, which reinvents events from a fictional past that
resonate with a real-life, post-Brexit, Britain
*Concatenation*
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