Hedge of Mist

This is the final book in the "Arthur" trilogy. I admit that I try to read any version of the Arthurian legends that comes across my path, but I think that this is one of the better ones. Keneally-Morrison describes it in her afterword as a consolidation and lists out the impressive number and range of books she has referenced in writing it. It is as original as it can be, the original Earth based stories becoming prophecies of a far future. This third book ties up the loose ends and brings us a thrilling grail quest, a moving death of Arthur and the setting up of the "once and future king" with lots of magic, spaceships and bardery. The characters are always interesting, and there are lots of them and the writing is good. The story is show more very moving in places and it held my interest throughout. If you are an Arthur buff then I recommend this very highly. show less

Lyrical passages do exist in this book but they are few and far between. The Hedge of Mist took me forever to complete because I kept falling asleep. It’s peppered with unpronounceable Gaelic names that appear to be made up by letting a cat walk across the key board. Saying that -- still the text was beautifully copy edited because I found not a single typo.

I think first person was a poor choice for point of view in this 516 page tale. It was impossible for me to suspend my disbelief and think of the narrator as male. For most of the 516 pages the author told what was going on – I would have preferred to be shown. The plotting read like a video game. I’m not sure if the language was pretentious or beyond me but either way I found show more myself going back and rereading parts when it appeared that I had missed what had happened during the first reading.

Here are a few of the lyrical passages;

.As parents, our overriding instinct is to protect; but our equally compelling duty is to push our cherished chicks from the nest.

I felt a short sharp flare of utterly unreasonable annoyance. Supper! Please! I wished only to go on reading all night, all next day, .that. was the only hunger I needed to feed just now.

Slaying – even in battle, even for cause – is an alteration in [karma] unlike all others, for slayer and slain alike. Though it can like other alterings be lawfully made, it sets up a vibration, a resonance that will sound in the end through both.

I wonder who she is really writing about here;

That is often so, with figures larger than life, as I have noticed down the years. Alive, such persons are too strong and vital and, well, alive for us; they have wills and wishes of their own, they can thwart us and deny us and change on us. But dead, these folk become fair game for admirers and detractors alike unfairly to pursue with the intent of alteration. Their lives and realities are blithely ignored, so that needy admirers can bend them to their own use; or half-truths are flung out like rotting wheat, allowing envious cowardly detractors, who would never in a thousand lifetimes have enough courage to live as their victims had done, to raise crops of malice and spite. And the ones they use for these evil practices cannot defend themselves; and if those who know the truth are brave enough or angry enough to speak out against all this, they themselves are denounced, and the sham goes on.

This passage on when the muse strikes was wonderful;

.You will be sitting doing some chore or other, or nothing, and then coming in from nowhere will be a sort of insistent tugging that cannot be ignored, be you never so absorbed or so idle. And you will get the instrument of your craft as a lover goes to the beloved. And then – the clearest and best I can put it is that you will be .used.. Something will take you up to do its will in just the same way as you do take up your instrument. You are a means no more, to set down what needs, what wills, to take form; and which does the inestimable honor of choosing you to do it. show less

This is the third volume of the Tales of Arthur series. Taliesin Glyndour, chief poet of Keltia, reveals the climax of the epic of Arthur, his sister Morgan, his beloved Gweniver, and the quest for the Graal -- and finally brings his own Triad to completion.

A good read.