The Wicked Day

4.5 stars
“The wicked day of destiny,” as Malory calls it, is the day when Arthur’s final battle was fought at Camlann. In this battle, we are told, “Arthur and Medraut fell.” (from the author’s notes provided at the end of this book).

This is what we know of Mordred, and the subsequent legend has painted him to be a cunning and selfish bastard, who rose against his father, Arthur, and in an attempt to seize his kingdom brought them both low. What if he were none of those things? What if he were caught in this destiny foretold by Merlin in the same way that Arthur is caught in it? What if he were a man with faults and strengths? This, indeed, is the logical truth of this story, and this is Mordred Mary Stewart gives us.

In The show more Wicked Day, Stewart does for Mordred what she did for Merlin in the trilogy, she humanizes him. She is so skilled at opening up a legend and finding a man, at filling the gaps of the story in a way that make you nod your head and agree, “it might have been like this,” that she takes my breath away.

I am always tempted to say that this novel does not achieve the heights of the trilogy, but that is because I am too enamoured of Merlin, whose character touches the very soul of me. An unfair comparison, because Mordred is not Merlin and his story cannot ever offer the same kind of richness, no matter whose hands you might put it into. What Stewart is able to do with this novel is every bit as amazing, for she turns a legend on its head without deviating from its particulars one iota.

When Arthur fathers Mordred, Merlin tells him he has simply set the lengths of his life and the time of his death. But those are things that come to all men. Life and death are always planted in the same seed, we mortals just fail to look at it that way. When Mordred seeks to find Merlin and undo the curse he feels is upon him, this is what he finds:

”What he had seen as a cursed fate, foreseen with grief by Merlin and twisted into evil by Morgause, dwindled in this world of clear water and lighted mist into its proper form. It was not even a curse. It was a fact, something due to happen in the future, that had been seen by an eye doomed to foresee, whatever the pain of that Seeing. It would come, yes, but only as, soon or late, all deaths came. He, Mordred, was not the instrument of a blind and brutal fate, but of whatever, whoever, made the pattern to which the world moved. Live what life brings; die what death comes. He did not see the comfort even as cold.”

The trick in life might be to live the life we are given as completely and as well as we can, and what others may say about us when we are gone may not matter as much as we think it does. show less

This is listed on LibraryThing as Book 4 of Mary Stewart's "Arthurian Saga." The first three books are the story of Merlin as he tells it, and are a beguiling mixture of fantasy and historical fiction, with an emphasis on the historical. The first book, The Crystal Cave was assigned to me in high school. Not the usual kind of assigned reading, but I suspect my teacher was wise enough that above all, the best you can do is spark a love for reading and history, and one does not feed that on Cather in the Rye alone. (Or at all.) The Crystal Cave was the first time I encountered the idea of Arthur as historical figure, and not just of tales of magic. It had more the feel of Mary Renault's tales of ancient Greece, and I was completely show more enchanted by the novel and read the two sequels. Stewart is a wonderful storyteller and lyrical prose stylist.

In this fourth book we leave Merlin behind though: this book is centered on Mordred. I can't say I've read every take on Arthurian legend. (Who has? They're legion.) But I've read Arthurian novels by a lot of authors: Marion Zimmer Bradley, T.H. White, Thomas Malory, Jack Whyte, Gillian Bradshaw, Parke Godwin, Phyllis Ann Karr. And I've never seen a more sympathetic--or more memorable Mordred. I have to rate this a little lower than her Merlin Trilogy--but not by much, and that's a very high bar. show less

With this fourth installment, Stewart concludes her well-respected and exquisitely-detailed Arthurian Saga. The conclusion was satisfying, if somewhat excruciating in the way knowing impending disaster cannot be avoided can be. I recommended the series as a whole for fans of light fantasy and Arthurian legend.

A sequel to Stewart's Merlin novels, focusing on the life of Mordred. Mordred grows up a fisherman's son in the Orkneys until one day he rescues Gawain, the eldest son of King Lot and Queen Morgause. Morgause takes Mordred to the court as one of Lot's bastard sons, preparing to use him as a weapon against his real father, Arthur, the High King and Morgause's half-brother. Mordred fights his fate, foretold by Merlin, that he is destined to be Arthur's bane. I liked this but not quite as much as the Merlin novels.

Last of the trilogy of books re-telling the Arthurian legend from Merlin's point of view. Not as good as the first two, but Mary Stewart at her worst is better than the majority of authors out there. And this is definitely NOT her worst!

Continuation of the series. There's technically one more, but this already felt somewhat like an add-on as Merlin retired at the end of the last book. One of Merlin's first pieces of advise to Arthur was to leave Morguesse's child alive. The child gets named Modred, and this is his story. The change in voice form the previous trilogy works well, and it's interesting to find some of the other details the author has managed to unearth. However Modred's voice isn't that different from Merlin, he's very introspective , slow to action and not particularly concerned about public opinion. Finally we get one (solitary) adventure of the Knights of the Round Table.

Modred's tale starts as a young boy in the Orkney Isles where Morguesse has hidden show more him fostered to a childless couple. He's learnt fishing and lives in a peat croft. By chance, and unaware, he aids one of Morguesse's legitimate children Prince to the isles. Morguesse takes the opportunity to bring him more publicly into court, and in due course (when she's summoned to camalot to account for Merlin's first poisoning) to Arthur's attention. Arthur can't resist including his only natural son into his court and so in due course as he grows Modred gains ever more responsibility.

I've come across the fable of the asp several times, and it didn't seem to fit in very well here, although obviously the author needed sometime dramatic to set Arthur and Modred that badly at odds after most the book having their ever closer relationship. I wasn't convinced by the series of coincidences and mishaps required to bring about the eventual wicked day. Morgan and Morgusee just seem to fade away and never quite gain the depth attributed to them in other tellings of the legends. The one tale of teh Knights is an almost incidental inclusion of the Green Giant set for no reason in Brittany. Sadly it didn't add anything to the book except pages, and none fo the other Knights seemed to feature very much. This is a much less complex story than the previous three. show less

Fantastic finale to Stewart's Arthurian saga. Mary Stewart's take that Mordred was basically good and that events forced destiny's hand is an interesting point of view and makes for exciting reading.

The characters are fleshed out, the events believable. Terrific series and well worth reading.