Lancelot Du Lethe

Another one of my long-time agopurchases re-read for potential weeding, but this time around it’s going to be kept! This retelling of the Arthur-Guinevere-Lancelot story won’t dethrone Rosalind Miles’ version as my favourite, but I really enjoyed King’s supernatural explanation of events. Instead of Guinevere and Lancelot being cast as simply people who cheated on their respective husband and sovereign, King explains their attraction to each other through the lens of the Fey. He imagines that they were both faerie-offspring of the royal houses who were betrothed to each other at birth before becoming changelings in the mortal realm and taking their places as the Power of the Land and the heir to Benwick’s crown. Guinevere has show more often been seen as more than a mortal woman - a priestess of the old faith most often, but she is also often given supernatural powers that are tied to Avalon and Goddess worship more than a simple priestess deserves - so King’s reading of her is actually quite close to tradition, but his interpretation of Lancelot being a faerie changeling gives credence to the youth’s training on Avalon (hence Lancelot du Lac, of the Lake) after the death of his parents. Why else would the denizens of Avalon give aid to a mortal child, even if he is a royal orphan? This also raises his status, and therefore his complicity, in the betrayal against Arthur to be equal to Guinevere’s own, which with King’s stipulation that Guinevere’s marriage to Arthur is chaste makes their standing much more equal than other author’s interpretations. I’ll have to go back and read King’s other Arthurian novels now, since apparently I missed them! show less

A facepalm take on the Arthur mythos that removes ALL the interesting character dynamics. Guinevere is the perfect lady in white, her marriage with Arthur is symbolic and chaste, she and Lancelot are destined to be together, etc.

Extremely disappointing, and one would be better off with Nancy McKenzie (for the romance) or Bradley (for the magic).

This is not in the category of "goodreads", but "badreads". I stopped at page 150 and cannot bring myself to read any further. The writing style is bad, the very interesting story is told in the worst way possible.

What a waste of time!