Like many people, I found the first few books in the Camulod Chronicles to be exceptional but I lost a little bit of interest in the latter books of the series. Not that any of the books were less than great, they were worth every penny in my opinion. It's just that the first books were so remotely distant from anything 'Arthurian' and so intimate with the lives of the Romans that the story was centered on.

Although the stories in subsequent volumes are intriguing and well written, it seems that it was almost unavoidable to subconsciously label them as the transition or stage-setting from the exciting newness of the accounts of Publius Varus and Caius Britannicus to the anticipated culmination of the Arthur's tale set in the gritty and violent realism of post-Roman Britain.

The Lance Thrower, to me, is the start of the anticipated culmination. Before reading the book, I was expecting that it would necessarily remind me somehow of the traditional story of Arthur. After all, the main character is the well known 'Lancelot', right? To my enjoyment, this was not the case at all. This is the story of Clothar of Ganis, raised in the Frankish kingdom of Benwick in southern Gaul. I'll abstain from explaining the discrepancy between the names and leave that to the book itself. The book, in fact, harkens back to the freshness of the first books and for the most part is quite remote from the scenarios of the recent books. Only in the last pages does the story tie into ongoing struggles of Arthur and Merlyn in Camulod.

I was deeply drawn into the story of Clothar, which sets the stage for an unresolved personal quest for revenge in Gaul in addition to creating and defining the personality that will be so intimately involved in the eventual dissolution of everything built upon in the series so far. The only thing that I can really criticize in the book is Whyte's erroneous geographical references. In describing the location of the kingdom of Benwick, he refers to Lake Genava which would have been Lacus Lemanus or Lacus Lausonius in the given time period. The lake took the name of Genava/Geneva later in the Middle Ages. Whether or not this was intentional for the purpose of clarity is unknown to me. However, he also refers to Benwick as being in Gallia Cisalpina which is an obvious error since Gallia Cisalpina is essentially the valley of the Padus in northern Italia and Genava was located in Gallia Narbonensis (Transalpina).

Regarless of any minor technical errors, I enjoyed the book considerably and urge anyone who may have been put off by the recent books in the series to get this book since it introduces some needed freshness and provides more of Jack Whyte's excellent realism-based storytelling.