Enemy of God suffers, ever so slightly, from "second book syndrome". Clearly the second part of a planned three book trilogy, it definitely takes some time to get going. An improvement in some ways on the first book, with more developed characters and plots and schemes finally coming together, it nonetheless didn't grab me immediately.

It starts very slow - and by starts I mean the first half of the book really plods along - so slowly that it's taken my quite a while to finish. But somewhere between the halfway and the two-thirds mark things really start coming together and it ends in an incredibly satisfying, brilliant crescendo of action that makes the earlier build-up all worth it. The chickens come home to roost, Arthur is made darker, grittier, more than the paragon he was in the first novel. This version of Arthur is what everyone means when they describe this series as the "darkest, most 'realistic'" version of the tale ever told. 

Cornwell has masterfully set us up for the end of the trilogy, the way forward is clear and I'm immediately starting the final novel. Knowing how the popular version of Arthur's tale ends has given me a broad idea of where this version will go, and I'm excited to see how Cornwell gets there. I just wish this book didn't take quite so long to get there.