Friday, March 28, 2014

It's a Busy Life in Camelot

Another double up. Books 8 and 9 are Camelot's Destiny and Fate of Camelot by Cynthia Breeding.

Alright, so in Camelot's Destiny we get to most of the meat of the Legends; fighting Saxons, Mordred (or Medraut in this book), the Arthur/Lance/Gwen triangle and all it's complications, Camlann and Arthur's death.

And overall, it's serviceable. But you (ok, I) can really see Breeding's influences in this book. She leans heavily on Mists of Avalon for Nimue and Lancelot and the old religions and whatnot. Which is fine, just noticeable. Her Gwen is also pretty much right out of Persia Wooley's Guinevere books. Once again, that's fine, just noticable. I'm very glad she didn't take Mists' Gwen, cause she is a horrible creature. Fortunately, her Lance, Gwen and Arthur are fairly likeable. There's still too much arguing between Arthur and Gwen, but when your wife is also in love with your best friend, that does kind of make sense. Medraut is a creepy bastard and he and Morgana make good villains.

Fate of Camelot kinda... goes off the rails as Breeding attempts to do a Once and Future King kinda thing. I appreciate her trying to do a completely different take on things, but there were a few details that just didn't work for me. Seems Arthur did not die at Camlann, he was taken to Avalon, but he was healed there. Gwen had to go with him to help, basically because she's Queen. Or something. But then it gets all weird with her being stuck in Faerie because the god Cerunos is infatuated with her and yeah... I like the supernatural in my Arthurian legends, but I find it works best if it is on the edges, interacting but not intersecting. But here we have unicorns and faries and it just seemed too much. Eventually Lance rescues Gwen from Faerie (of course), and Arthur says she can go with Lance, since Arthur is too busy roaming Britain and whatnot trying to keep the peace with the Saxons. Morgana's still running around, but she's kinda ineffectual for most of the book where she just pops up now and then basically to mention, numerous times, that she has to kill Guinevere. Which she does at the end, by unleashing the bubonic plague on Camelot. Uh ok? Anyway, Morgana also dies in a most unsatisfying way and I just found a lot of this book basically that, unsatisfying.

Now what I DID like is that she got the Grail Quest with Galahad and Peredur just right. All their stupidity and wanderings and whatnot and all the details are very good, and even if her Galahad is a prat, he's not as bad a prat as Galahad's often are. I kept just wanting to stay with Galahad and groaned whenever I started a new chapter and we were back to Lance and Gwen. Cause they got boring.

A fun little read.

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