It has been fortold: In the hour of Britain’s greatest need, King Arthur will return to rescue his people. In Portugal, the reprobate King Edward the Ninth has died by his own hand. In England, a dark scenario conceived by the power-hungry Prime Minister, Thomas Waring, is about to be realized: the total destruction of the British monarchy in the twenty-first century. And in the Scottish Highlands, a mystical emissary named Mr. Embries — better known as “Merlin” — informs a young captain that he is next in line to occupy the throne. For James Arthur Stuart is not the commoner he has always believed himself to be — he is Arthur, the legendary King of Summer, reborn. But the road to England’s salvation is rocky and dangerous, with powerful waiting to ambush: Waring and his ruthless political machine ... and the agents of an ancient, far more potent evil. For Arthur is not the only one who has returned from the mists of legend. And Merlin’s magic is not the only sorcery that has survived the centuries

Lewis Gillies is pursuing graduate work in Celtic studies at Oxford when his rich roommate, Simon Rawnson, slips through a hole in a cairn to the land of the Tuatha de Danann. With the help of an eccentric professor, Lewis pursues Simon and finds himself playing a major role in some important Celtic myths. In retelling these myths, Lawhead ( Arthur ) allows his characters to become unspecific archetypes who therefore fail to hold the reader’s interest. As he is herded from event to event, Lewis, supposedly a Celtic scholar, fails to recognize the import of these occurences. Throughout, Lawhead tells his readers what to feel rather than letting his story move them