Arthur, by Stephen R. Lawhead

Today I'm looking at the third and what, according to my research anyway, was supposed to be the final book in the Pendragon Cycle, Arthur. This book finally gets to the reign of King Arthur, which is at least what I've been waiting for this entire time and as I said I felt like the series was building up to this. The book is told from three perspectives, by Pelleas Merlin's servant and companion, and by Bedwyr (aka Bedivere) one of Arthur's knights, both of which are set early in Arthur's reign. The final section is told from the perspective of Aneirin, a page and fosterling of Arthur well into Arthur's reign and is present at the very end.  The book therefore covers the entirety of Arthur's reign but since the first two sections deal with the very early years the latter part feels very rushed.

We join Arthur when he is a mere fifteen years old and led by Merlin to London so he can retrieve the Sword of Britain from the stone where Merlin placed it. As Arthur is the rightful heir to the high kingship of Britain he has no trouble pulling the sword out. (After all, we know how the story's supposed to go.) But Arthur is not immediately recognized by the petty kings of Britain and some demand further proof of Arthur's right to kingship. After some deliberation it is decided not to grant Arthur, who is after all fifteen, the high kingship but the largely meaningless title of Dux Britanorum and the duty of protecting all of Britain from the Saxons, Picts, Irish, Angles, Jutes, Scots, Picts, and other barbarian tribes that have been raiding and invading Britain.

Over a period of years Arthur is ultimately successful in defeating not only the barbarian invaders, but also in crushing the final pockets of rebellion among the British lords, some of whom decide working with the barbarians is better than swearing fealty to Arthur. Arthur marries Guinevere, and a new period of peace and prosperity begins in Britain. Of course eventually a Mordred character shows up, although the weird thing is he isn't actually Arthur's son. He's still Morgan's son and is clearly there to ruin everything for Arthur and Britain, but he doesn't seem to worm his way into Arthur's court and causes trouble. Morgan gets caught by one of Arthur's knights and executed, and Mordred immediately runs away, swearing he'll get his revenge.

Arthur's downfall is caused largely through his own hubris. Arthur has himself crowned emperor in the west, which results in the Byzantine emperor immediately saying Arthur can't truly call himself emperor in the west if he hasn't liberated Rome from the barbarians. Despite Merlin saying mounting a campaign to liberate Rome is a bad idea, Arthur decides to do so anyway and leaves with most of his soldiers. Mordred immediately gets the Picts to rise in rebellion and sacks Arthur's capital, taking Guinevere and Merlin hostage. Arthur has to come back and engages Mordred and his followers in combat. As anyone who knows the Arthurian myth knows, many of Arthur's best knights are killed, Arthur slays Mordred, but not before Mordred fatally wounds Arthur. Merlin then takes Arthur to the isle of Avalon with the fair folk (The survivors of Atlantis who have been hanging around) and they then disappear off the face of the earth.

There is one thing that I can appreciate about this book and it's the effort on the part of the author to include some of the older knights in the mythos such as Kay, Bedivere, and Bors and completely excluding Lancelot who is a later addition to Arthurian lore. As I mentioned in my review of Gwenhwyfar, it's kind of weird to see Lancelot in a semi-historical retelling of Arthur because he was basically grafted onto the story later. So on that level I really appreciated the exclusion of Lancelot from the story.

That being said, there are a lot of problems with this book and I'm almost left with the feeling that Lawhead wasn't entirely sure what he wanted to do with the story. At one point Merlin is blinded by Morgan after engaging in a magical battle with her. Merlin is not only blinded physically but also magically and is no longer able to determine the shape of future events. I was left with the feeling this was a permanent change to Merlin and Lawhead's way of making Merlin less powerful and less able to aid Arthur in years to come. However, when we jump ahead to the final third of the book, Merlin has his sight again, both literally and metaphorically. So it felt like there weren't really any consequences for Merlin.

I also didn't understand the decision to make Mordred not related to Arthur, especially after Lawhead incorporated a prophecy Guinevere heard where Arthur's son would kill him so Guinevere has been taking efforts to avoid conceiving a child with Arthur. Granted this information is coming from Morgan and Merlin immediately dismisses everything she says as lies, but Guinevere certainly reacted as if what Morgan was saying was the truth. But Lawhead then turns around and has Merlin say that Mordred's father is one of Morgan's children through Lot of Orkney. Assuming Merlin is correct, then why even mention the prophecy? The prophecy exists to create a Mordred-shaped hole in the narrative for him to slip into. If Mordred isn't Arthur's son and is just some guy, why even include the prophecy? It just doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Another thing I didn't quite understand was how the Grail Quest was included. Lawhead has taken a very pro-Christianity stance throughout these books and he went through the effort of making the Fisher King, a prominent figure in Grail lore, not only a main character but also Merlin's grandfather. You would think that the Grail Quest would be central to Lawhead's story of Arthur's reign but it's mentioned exactly twice. Once, when the quest is first given and Arthur announces they have been chosen by God to seek the Holy Grail. At which point it's immediately forgotten because Arthur wants to crown himself emperor and another emperor said he isn't really an emperor if he doesn't control Rome. The Grail Quest is only mentioned again in a post script where the narrator basically says, ''Oh yeah, after Arthur disappeared, some of his knights went to find the Grail which we forgot about. They didn't succeed.'' So I'm puzzled by Lawhead's decision. He went through so much effort to include Christianity and the Fisher King and when it comes for the most Christian quest of all, he totally drops the ball on it. I assume it's covered in more detail in the next books, Pendragon and Grail, but I honestly can't say I'm really interested in reading it.

Overall this book feels like a lot of missed opportunities or confusion. Lawhead's obviously making an attempt to include older parts of the Arthurian mythos but the result feels inconsistent or incomplete. And for whatever reason, the Grail Quest, which should have been the centerpiece, is almost entirely forgotten. And with Arthur gone, with no heir and Britain falling to barbarian invaders, I'm not sure where the series can go from here. I'll probably look at the summary of Pendragon and make a decision, but I'm not sure if I want to keep with this particular Arhturian re-telling.

- Kalpar

Merlin, by Stephen R. Lawhead

Today I'm looking at the second book in the Pendragon Cycle from Stephen R. Lawhead, Merlin. This book covers the life of Merlin, whose birth concluded the first book, Taliesin. This book is told entirely from the perspective of Merlin and goes up until the death of Uther Pendragon and Merlin's placing the sword in the stone until it will be removed by Arthur. And no, that's not a spoiler because if you know Arthurian legend you know how the story works.

The worst thing I have to say about this book is I feel like it's just boring more than anything else. Merlin spends a lot of his time outside of what's going on in Britain. For example, when he's a kid he gets kidnapped by a tribe of hill-folk and spends something like three years living north of the Wall and basically cut off from all the other events occurring in Britain. On the plus side, this is how Merlin learns to do certain forms of magic, but on the other hand he's away for important things happening in Britain. This is explicitly the time when the Roman legions, the final pretenses of Roman control over Britain, are abandoning Britain and leaving it fully exposed to attacks from Saxons, Picts, and Irish raiders. In Taliesin and to an extent in Merlin as well, the characters are increasingly concerned by the growth of fear and desperation among the population as Roman protection disappears and the threat of barbarian invasion becomes ubiquitous. But Merlin's gone for significant chunks of that time.

His capture by the hill-folk isn't the only time Merlin is effectively M.I.A. during this book. After returning from his capture north of the wall, Merlin finds another group of survivors from Atlantis and falls in love with their princess. Once Merlin is recognized as a king in his own right, he arranges to marry his love and they are soon expecting their first child. Unfortunately for Merlin, both his wife and child, as well as most of the second band of survivors of Atlantis, are killed by a band of Saxon raiders. Merlin slays a great number of them in a battle-fury, and then wanders off to be insane with grief for a number of years. How many is not stated and I begin to get the feeling that the Atlantean Fair Folk have much longer lives than humans because Merlin is described as hardly aging a day while other people have grown old and died in the same time. So bad things continue to happen in Britain but once again Merlin is not present to witness them. When Merlin comes out of his madness Vortigern is High King of Britain and has made a mess of things by making deals with the Saxons to protect his own throne and will be overthrown by the Britains in favor of Aurelianus and his brother, Uther.

This is at the point where we're on familiar Arthurian legend ground and Lawhead starts hewing closer to the source materials that have been passed down over the years. He still takes his own spin on things and provides his own version of events, such as the romance between Uther and Igraine who Merlin describes as Gorlois's daughter rather than his wife. And I did find myself being slightly more interested as events got into territory which I was more familiar. But I was left with the feeling that most of this book, much like all of the previous book, was basically set up for a story that's coming later, rather than being a terribly interesting story in itself. It does seem a little weird to me that the next book, Arthur, was imagined originally as the ending to the series rather a midway point.

So on the one hand, because I can get these books for free and because I'm curious to see Lawhead's take on the more well-known bits of Arthurian mythos. On the other, I'm concerned that they're going to be a lot of effort without a lot of pay-off in the end. So we'll see what happens.

- Kalpar

Taliesin, by Stephen R. Lawhead

Today I'm looking at the first of the five books of The Pendragon Cycle by Stephen R. Lawhead. The reason I'm looking at this series is twofold. First, it's a different take on Arthurian legend and as I may have established previously on this blog, I am a huge sucker for Arthurian legend. Secondly, I can get all of them for free from the library to listen to, so that's a pretty good deal in my opinion. This series is, as far as I can tell, an attempt to make the Arthurian mythos vaguely match up with history. I say vaguely because once you've thrown Atlantis and magic into the mix it's hardly become historical fantasy anymore.

The book mostly follows the lives of Taliesin, a prince of a Celtic tribe in Britain during the waning days of the Roman Empire, and Charis, the princess of one of the nine kingdoms of Atlantis. The book alternates between Taliesin and Charis until Charis and her people are forced to flee Atlantis and arrive in Britain where they meet Taliesin's people. Charis and Taliesin eventually fall in love and have a son whom they name Merlin. So really this book is a really long story about Merlin's parents.

I'm not sure how I feel about this book because it feels like a very lengthy exercise in setting the conflict for later books up rather than accomplishing much itself. There are a few important things that happen, it is true, and we're pretty explicitly beat over the head with the idea that dark days are coming. The fall of Atlantis is blamed on a rise in some mysterious dark force, although what it is I'm not entirely sure. Possibly Satan? And then there's the general fall of Rome from Britain and the arrival of Irish, Picts, Scots, and Saxons in Britain causing all sorts of trouble. So yeah, things are pretty bad, but I was left with the feeling the book took so long to talk about how bad things were and setting things up for later books, that this felt like an extended prologue.

I'm also not sure on the decision to talk about Merlin's parents and grandparents. There are some interesting approaches, such as having the stories of Fair Folk be about people from Atlantis who just act very differently from the native residents of Britain, or having Charis's title of Lady of the Lake be an affectionate name Taliesin gave her. And while Taliesin is a name established in Welsh folklore (at least what a minimal amount of digging managed to turn up for me anyway), I am left wondering how many casual readers of Arthurian myth would pick up on the connection. And, as I said, I was left with the feeling that not a lot happens in this book so much as it's setting stuff up for the next books. It's okay to do twists on Arthurian legend. Heck, Gwenhwyfar was one enormous twist on the mythos and I loved it. But at least in Gwenhwyfar there were characters we recognized from the story so we could compare them to how they differed. In this one, we really only get the Fisher King, the Lady of the Lake, and Merlin as a baby. I just wish there had been more familiar characters for us to see. Maybe in the next book we'll see more, like Uther Pendragon, Arthur's father. But that remains to be seen.

In an interesting side note, I've also discovered what it takes for me to suspend my disbelief. Magic? Fine. Atlantis? No problem. Potatoes, an American root crop, in Roman Britain? Hold on there, something's not right! It was really a throwaway line that the author probably didn't give a second thought, but me being the pedantic historian I am I latched onto it. I'm also not sure about claiming Mithras and Isis were the same god but in male and female forms. Although we have very little information about Mithras to begin with so it's hard to say for certain. I did feel like the theology of this book's universe got really fuzzy. Like I didn't understand why British druids would care about the birth of Jesus who they admit as the son of the good god but don't worship as a god? Until Taliesin meets god and becomes a prophet of Christianity? Seriously, Christianity comes in really suddenly and Taliesin's basically, ''Aw man, Christianity is the best thing ever! Their god is awesome!'' Which...okay, cool, I guess. It just feels odd to me because I know some of the Christianity stuff like the Grail Quest got grafted onto the Arthurian mythos much later.

So far I feel like of the more ''historical'' takes on Arthurian legend, Gwenhwyfar leaves this one far behind in the dust. Maybe it will improve with later books, but that remains to be seen.

- Kalpar