Bernard Cornwell is a master of historical fiction, and his output is phenomenal. This book is set in 885 AD, in England, and is Cornwell's vehicle for teklling the story of the making of England: that is to say, the unification of Wessex with the other realms in the south and west of the island in conflict with the Vikings.

Sword Song stands on its own as a novel, but it is also the seventh book in Cornwell's sequence of ten novels:The Last Kingdom.