All the reviews of The King's Peace mentioned that it was an Arthurian retelling. It's also Jo Walton's first novel, and it shows. The writing, while workmanlike and readable, isn't as compelling as others, and the use of place names in an imaginary Britain populated with Celtic names doesn't work to give you a sense of place.
The narrator, Sulien, is a large woman trained as a warrior, and at the start of the novel is raped by raiders who also kill her brother. Making a pact to escape, she discovers the rest of her village was also pillaged, and is assigned to ride for help. Finding King Urdo, the Arthur of the story, she joins his military as an armiger, and devotes herself to his forging a kingdom and fighting his battles until he unites the island as a high king and enforces the peace.
This may be an Arthurian-style story, but it's one with a light touch. You'd have a hard time figuring who's the Merlin analogue, though the Guinevere analog wasn't hard. I kept trying to figure out whether Sulien was Lancelot, and it might be she is, but there's no love triangle, though her powress at arms are quite apparent.
There's magic in the book, as well as the well-understood struggle between the new Christian-analog religion and the old Celtic-analog gods. But gods are real, and magic is real, though not the showy type. I enjoyed that aspect but again, it doesn't play a big part in the story.
Ultimately, the biggest weakness of the book is that it drags quite a bit. It certainly doesn't make me want to go out and read further books in the series.
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