Teresa Edgerton

I hate Arthurian fantasy. Why? Because I love Camelot. Go read Le Morte de Arthur. Read Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Idylls of the King. Read T.H. White’s The Once and Future King. And you’re done; everything since has been a King-Arthur-with-a-twist or a flat-out deconstruction. Don’t get me started on the movies.

So imagine my surprise when I got sucked into an Arthurian-like epic that takes place in a Welsh-Briton setting. Perhaps that was the point; although it was clearly drawn from show more the Arthurian epic cycle, it wasn’t Arthur’s Camelot–it was imperiled but not doomed. Even more interesting, the story began at the end of the cycle: it began with the narrator telling us of Glastyn the Wizard’s disappearance.

“He left behind him: a whimsical, inconsistent king; an order of jaded, disillusioned knights; and a realm slipping slowly back into the chaos from which he, Glastyn, had rescued it some fifty years before.”

Celydonn’s Merlin had disappeared into his tree (or wherever). Now what? The books are about the now what. It could be read as Camelot: The Next Generation–the heroes who fight to save Celydonn from collapsing “back into chaos” are the young knights and squires of the court, aided by Glastyn’s mousy and disregarded apprentice, Teleri.

There are six books in the series (which is really two trilogies). Just how good are they? I actually stumbled across the second book first, in a truck-stop of all places. A passenger on a road-trip, I was desperate for reading material and The Moon In Hiding was the only fantasy title on the rack.

That’s right; I started with the second book in the set. And even realizing right off that I wasn’t starting at the beginning and had missed a whole boatload of backstory, I was hooked. Teresa Edgerton’s prose is luxurious, lush, deeply descriptive, bordering at times on poetic–perfect for the heroic, mythic setting of the stories. She spends five paragraphs describing Teleri ni Pendarin, for example. They are not boring paragraphs.

When I got home I hunted the first book down, then waited impatiently as the rest came out one by one. Today they are out of print. Fortunately you can find them all through Amazon.com, along with Edgerton’s other excellent titles (I particularly recommend Goblin Moon). The chronicles of Celydonn are heroic fantasy at its finest.

(Note: the first three books, Child of Saturn, The Moon in Hiding, and The Work of The Sun, form The Green Lion Trilogy) show less

For me this was the weakest of the three books. Edgerton gives an unsatisfying ending which bypasses the expected showdown and instead gives us a bit of Harlequin Romance and a fairytale resolution. However, I did appreciate the way she prefaced each chapter with passages from (fictitious) history and mythology which augment the main story.

While the waxing moon brings out plagues of goblins in the city of Thornburg, an alchemist searches for the secret of life, a fairy godmother conspires against her ward, and a masked man disrupts the meetings of secret covens.

Goblin Moon possesses fabulous atmosphere and wooden characters. Which is a shame, considering the novel's wryly ornate prose ("Chained to the seat beside him was a sad-faced miniature indigo ape with a jeweled collar"), chapter titles ("Chapter Ten: Which the Sensitive show more Reader may wish to Omit, but Ought to be read, nevertheless"), and the possibilities of the hero (a masked neurotic in the tradition of the Scarlet Pimpernel and Francis Crawford of Lymond). show less

Child of Saturn is set elsewhere – almost – and elsewhen, but it's a place and time where there is Christianity (Michelmas and Christmas and All-Hallows, christenings and crucifixes) and something not quite like the faerie that once walked this world (or so they say).

There are some beautifully unique characterizations here. The evil princess, Diaspad, is beautifully evil, not content with following all of the stereotypical paths an attractive wicked woman usually sticks to. Her coterie show more is an assortment of varying strengths, from a vapid son to a maid who might just have a backbone; it's a little scary to think what could have been accomplished by this lot if they were all clever and competent. The king, her half brother, is neither a great ruler nor a terrible one, but a rather capricious mediocre one – such as probably sat on many thrones throughout the centuries. He is, however, possessed of a Diaspad-shaped blind spot, and she has him trained so that he will not hear anything against her. His queen is brave and beleaguered, and not stupid, which is refreshing: so often a lady in her situation takes comfort where she oughtn't, which makes everything worse.

The two main characters acting against this background are the two most unique and fascinating (happily). The king's wizard, Glastyn, disappeared many years ago, leaving his very young and nearly invisible half-trained apprentice Teleri to fill in – which she does when pressured, preferring to remain invisible in her tower trying to complete her education with books that only open when certain circumstances are fulfilled. What she knows she knows, and does, well, but she has no confidence, no security. And to add to her lack of stability, the queen's champion, Ceilyn, intrudes on her life, and he isn't altogether the parfait gentil knight he appears to be and tries so hard to be …

The upshot is that very few characters behave as I expect them to – and in a library full of clichés and well-filled pigeonholes, that's tremendous. The writing is superb; the plot is engaging; the characters live and breathe. Wonderful stuff, not to be missed. show less