Stephen R. Lawhead

I zoomed through 'Tuck' even faster than a read through 'Hood' and 'Scarlet'. By now all the characters save one have been introduced and the stage has been set. All Lawhead needed to do was deliver the final, rousing battle between Rhi Bran y Hud's Grellon and the King's men.

And deliver he did. The final book picks up directly where 'Scarlet' left off; with the Grellon disappointed in the King's decision regarding their kingdom. In response Bran is adamant he will fight until his dying show more breath to have his people free and unhunted. So he and his loyal companion Friar Tuck set off to Gwenydd in north Wales to try to bring back men to aid in the fight. Again they engage in a clever ruse complete with disguises to rescue the disposed king of the realm from the dungeons of the portly Earl Hugh.

Tuck is a fair narrator, his happy and cautious but still adventurous personality balancing out the dark rage of Bran, making the book speed along at a quick pace. By the final confrontation I was loathe to put the book down for even a second.

I highly recommend the entire trilogy as it never lets up, never dragging even to the last. It's entertaining, smart and will make you believe that this truly is the real story of Robin Hood. show less

As a novel, Arthur is lighthearted, light-handed, and light reading. I don't mean that the book itself is lacking in substance, but that the tremendous amount of research that has clearly gone into the novel appears effortless, to my great amazement. The presentation of God almost exclusively through Arthur's eyes gives the book's philosophy a balance that many modern novels lack. God is present, but he is internalized within a character and not used as a narratorial mallet with which to show more bludgeon the unfortunate reader.

Having recently begun re-reading The Once and Future King (my favourite Arthurian narrative when I was in college), I very much enjoy the soft touch applied to Merlin in Arthur. (I'll shortly be revisiting the rest of the series, as I can't currently recall how Merlin is treated in his own volume). Lawhead's Merlin is surprisingly human in his behaviour and psychology, and the idea that he has weaknesses does not come as a surprise. This is excellent not so much because of Merlin, but because it makes Arthur stronger by contrast; he is the figurative "golden child" (the novel is rife with golden and regal imagery). When Merlin is weak, Arthur is unrelentingly strong, and the failures of a great man make Arthur all but invincible in contrast.

In short, I think this book is entirely acceptable for readers twelve and up (I'd say ten but for the prologue, though I probably first read this at the age of ten and would have had no idea what much of it meant). However, anyone who wants to read Arthur should absolutely read Taliesin first, because it is wonderful in its own right and has fleshes out some of the brevity of Arthur.

(First posted: http://legereinterlitteras.blogspot.com/2014/06/lawhead-lore-re-reading-arthur.h... show less

In this series, fantasy author Stephen R. Lawhead tackles the retelling of one of England’s most famous legends, the legend of Robin Hood, and does not disappoint with his lively take on the story. Most fascinatingly (at least to me) is how he attempts to historicize the story and, in what appears to me to be a very bold move, argues that the “original” folk hero was actually Welsh rather than English. (I am only very superficially acquainted with the fraught history of Welsh-English show more relations to which Lawhead alludes.)
Lawhead provides at the end of the introductory book an extended (and fascinating) explanation of his reasons for recontextualizing it as a Briton tale set in the days following the Norman Conquest (1066). He notes: “Within two months of the Battle of Hastings (1066), William the Conqueror…had subdued 80 percent of England. Within two years, they had it all under their rule. However…it took them over two hundred years of almost continual conflict to make any lasting impression on Wales.”
This story of “Rhi Bran y Hud” (King Bran the Enchanter) and his fight for the right to his ancestral throne in the cantref of Elfael, was, then, an icon of the Welsh resistance to French (Ffreinc in the book) conquest and control.
The key to this move is brilliant in its simplicity: in all the tellings of the Robin Hood legend, he’s imagined as adept with the longbow. And, in one of history’s more important oversights, the longbow was actually a Welsh invention, adopted by the English. From there, it’s not too great a leap to see the outlaw of Sherwood Forest as originally a fiercely independent Welsh prince, determined to keep his people free.
It would not be too much of stretch to say that, in Lawhead’s retelling, the longbow, like the primeval forest of the March that separated Wales from England, achieves the status of an independent character in the story (insofar as any inanimate object could achieve such status). It is the advantage provided by the longbow that “carries the day” for Welsh freedom. Again, Lawhead graciously provides an historical example to back this claim, the disastrous Battle of Agincourt (1415), where a small and vastly inferior British force (at best, 6,000 men) bested a French army of roughly 20,000 men, mostly knights. The result can only be termed, as Lawhead puts it, a “massacre.” Conservative estimates of French losses include 2,000 counts, barons, and dukes; over 3,000 knights and men-at-arms, and an additional 1,000 common soldiers.
The agreed cause of the rout is this: It is estimated that, within the first minute of the battle, the English longbowmen unleashed a flight of 72,000-plus arrows, shot with such force that they could pierce a knight’s armor. (In another place, Lawhead describes an arrow shot from a longbow with such force that it buries itself in an oaken door to half the length of its shaft.) In many ways, this battle established the longbow as the “superweapon” of the day and initiated a revolution in military tactics and strategy.
I suppose I enjoyed this book precisely because of the balance that Lawhead achieved between “legend” and “history.” He does keep the fantastical element alive, especially with the presence of Rhi Bran’s aged advisor, Angharad the banfáith (a wise woman or prophetess), who nurses a mortally-wounded Bran back to health and provides crucial and uncanny insights at key points in the narrative. But neither element overwhelms or displaces the other.
I also appreciated the pacing, a sometimes fault of fantasy fiction that either gets too caught up in description (destroying any sense of momentum) or too involved in the action (making for a work indistinguishable from a contemporary “thriller”). The story moves well, evokes the magic and mystery of the woodlands of the March, the stout character of the Welsh people, and the complexities of medieval systems of loyalty and honor that governed these actions.
I suppose those more familiar with the actual history of the period and/or the literary roots of the Robin Hood story would no doubt have a number of quibbles to list at this point, whereas I, in my broad ignorance, have only a couple nagging questions (less “problems” with the story than things I now wish to investigate a bit further). As I mentioned above, the presence of the banfáith Angharad, a key figure for Bran’s transformation from entitled royal outlaw to lawful king, in many ways represents Lawhead’s nod to the pervasive Celtic mysticism that undergirds these legends. Yet, it appears to me that Lawhead attempts, sometimes unconvincingly, to almost “Christianize” Angharad and her ancient ways learned from the ancestors. Especially in her interactions with Friar Tuck (Aethelfrith), I could easily imagine him expressing more animosity to her “ancient wisdom” than Lawhead chooses to allow. To be fair, I would have to say his characterization of Angharad rang a little false on this point.
The last point is even less significant to the overall success of the story. Lawhead hangs the resolution of the story (e.g., King William II’s decision to allow Bran to occupy the throne of Elfael with only an oath of fealty) on William the Red’s concern with his responsibility for the souls of those he killed. It doesn’t figure prominently in the story, but in his epilogue to the third book, Lawhead notes the serious extent of the monastic business of “cash for prayers.” While this was certainly a factor that would influence any king’s decision to sue for peace, I’m not sure it is as convincing as Lawhead would like it to be…at least, not very consistent with the devious character of King William in the rest of the story.
But these are all minor quibbles and questions that, in the end, did not detract from my simple enjoyment of a good book. For me, the book scored high marks in all the relevant categories: the plot was intriguing, the characters were well-drawn, the setting is beautifully evoked, and the telling avoided any heavy-handed moralism that has become the bane of modern fiction. True, I would not put on Lawhead the unfair burden of England’s “next Tolkien,” but I would say that he is definitely a unique voice in the realm of fantasy fiction…and a voice worthy of a wider hearing. show less

Rarely have I had such a strong negative reaction to a book. I hated it. And part of the reason, I think, I that the first volume, Taliesin, was superb. But while in Taliesin Lawhead spun an intriguing tale that treated the source material with respect, Merlin quickly becomes a religious tract proclaiming how superior christianity is to the pagan religions that it displaces.

For me, Lawhead did two unforgivable things in this book. First, he makes Merlin a christian and a missionary. Yes, of show more course the Arthur cycle is part of European christian heritage - but Merlin is ALWAYS the link back to the pagan past, the holder of the magic of ancient knowledge and the oral tradition that stretches back before the christians and even the Romans. To co-opt him as a tool to preach the christian that destroys that tradition, when almost every other aspect of the story already serves that purpose, is both pointless and offensive.

And even worse than this, the author turns aside from writing a fine, gripping, meaningful story with strong religious sentiments and begins to write a sermon. show less