 | Title: Endeavor Author: K.M. Shea Publisher: Take Out the Trash Pages: 112 Synopsis: (from goodreads) Only a few weeks have passed since Britt—or, as most know her, King Arthur—was outed as a girl. Britt’s relationship with her knights is strained and precarious, Lancelot is mucking up everything from tournaments to questing, and Merlin starts to act strangely when a beautiful girl named Lady Vivien comes to Camelot. Can Britt reclaim her knights’ loyalty? Will Merlin finally realize how much Britt means to him? |
Spoilers, etc…
The Twist
See
my earlier review of the first five books in this series. Basically a young
woman is pulled back from the 21st century to take the place of a
vanished King Arthur and begins to build a unique, and ultimately legendary,
kingdom.
The Plot
Britt’s
Round Table is growing up. They’re spending more and more time away from
Camelot on quests, and Britt is having some difficulty adjusting to their
prolonged absences. Especially since
pesky Lancelot insists on hanging around and Britt’s relationship with Merlin
is still strained since he learned she has feelings for him. On the (maybe?)
upside, the newest knight in Camelot, Sir Mordred, is making himself useful in
whatever ways he can manage.
When word comes of a strange stone that can conjure
storms and a knight who guards it, Ywain slips off alone to tackle the
adventure himself. Britt and Merlin are distracted from pursuing him by the
arrival of a new lady at court, Lady Vivien. Her intentions are clearly
sinister and she has some command of black magic, and Merlin continues to
distance himself from Britt as he investigates. Britt and Mordred, at Merlin’s
insistence to get her out of Vivien’s way, set off on a quest for a mysterious
shield with Britt taking the alias of “Galahad,” and after she defeats the
strange knight who guards it they take the shield (which, incidentally, they
agree is a really crappy shield and they’re not sure why it’s so important to
anyone).
Eventually word comes that Ywain has been captured by the
knight who guards the storm stone, so Britt and a company of knights set off to
rescue him. They discover when they arrive that Ywain has killed the stone’s
guardian, married his wife, and has become the new guardian. Britt isn’t sure
how she feels about this—she’s used to thinking of her knights as untried boys,
but now she has to adjust to the idea that they’re mature enough to marry,
settle down, and rule their own lands and they won’t be by her side the
majority of the time. Complicating matters further, Merlin decides that the
best course of action to thwart Vivien—who is more powerful than he
anticipated—is to pretend to be in love with her himself so she thinks she has
power over him. He wakes Britt up at dawn with the intention of saying goodbye
to her before he has to pretend to be in Vivien’s thrall, but ends up revealing
more of his own deep feelings than perhaps he wanted and leaves Britt in utter
confusion.
The Characters
Britt Arthurs/King Arthur/Galahad: Still on tentative
ground with most of her knights since the reveal of her true gender, though she
is slowly winning back their trust. This book reveals exactly how awful her
future life is destined to be: Merlin has realized that by pulling her back in
time in the manner that he did, he’s essentially made her immortal. She won’t
age, the passage of time will have less meaning for her, and she won’t die (I
guess unless outright killed—that part still constitutes a potential unexploited
loophole). For someone as dependent for emotional support on relationships as
Britt is, this is as close to hell as you could probably get, since she will be
doomed to watch people she adores grow old and die for eternity. Luckily or
unluckily, Merlin hasn’t gotten around to telling her yet. She still has a (she
believes) unrequited crush on Merlin, but it doesn’t blind her to his faults.
She and Lancelot are being much more open about their distaste for each other,
while she and Guinevere are finding a surprising rapport. Britt still finds
Guinevere annoying, but seems to be growing fond of her nonetheless. She is
also surprised how much she is coming to like Mordred, since in her vague
memory of Arthurian legend he was involved somehow in Arthur’s downfall. She’s
apparently taking on the additional persona of Galahad as an alter ego, so
presumably in the future when she goes out questing it will be as Galahad and
not as King Arthur.
Merlin: He really can be dense. In the pursuit of
protecting Britt he’s doing a great job alienating her instead, trying to keep
secrets instead of sharing his worries about Vivien. Merlin and Britt are cute
as a couple, but since Merlin can only seem to manage to get his head out of
his ass every once in awhile it’s going to be a long haul. I really hope he
gives up this notion of pretending to be madly in love with Vivien before she
poisons him. Or traps him in a tree or a crystal cave. Or Britt just chops off
his head with Excalibur out of sheer frustration.
Lancelot: Man I want to slap this guy, which I assume was
Shea’s intent in writing him this way. He’s annoyingly perfect and pretty
openly scheming to use any weakness he finds in Britt for his own gain. I don’t
think he wants to replace her as king, he just seems to want as much positive
attention from others as he can garner, and Britt’s open dislike is an obstacle
to other peoples’ unadulterated admiration. He’s also disturbingly perceptive,
accurately deducing that the current problems between Britt and Merlin have their
origin in Merlin’s rejection of Britt’s romantic feelings.
Mordred: I still can’t figure this guy out or what Shea’s
ultimate plans for him are. He seems to be going out of his way to be
supportive when Britt needs it, especially as she starts to realize that all of
her closest friends and confidantes are going to be pulling away from her in
the near future due to other obligations. Yet he openly admits he won’t say
anything about his family or his past, other than vague hints that he’s done a
lot of traveling. He does have the traditional Mordred gift of always saying
exactly the right thing at the right time. I really want him to actually turn
out to be the trustworthy guy he currently appears to be (since in the earliest
legends about him he wasn’t Arthur’s betraying bastard son and it would be a
cool twist to have Mordred, of all people, as an unequivocal good guy),
but there’s enough mystery still surrounding him that I won’t pin any hopes on
it.
Ywain: Feeling that Britt is holding him back, Ywain slips
out alone when he hears about an adventure. The early part of the Knight of the
Lion story begins here, though we mostly find out about his conquest of
Esclados (who isn’t named in this version) and his marriage to Laudine in
hindsight. There is some potential trouble if he is called away in the future
and isn’t around to defend the storm stone—possibly a subplot of a future book
if Shea plans on continuing with the Knight of the Lion storyline of Ywain
betraying Laudine's trust to return if he leaves.
Guinevere: She’s not exactly a deep thinker, but she’s
sweet and her heart is in the right place (except for her bizarre crush on
Lancelot). While Britt finds her silly, she also feels somewhat protective of
Guinevere and defends her when Vivien tries to bully her.
Vivien: A mysterious lady who comes to court and
immediately sets Merlin on edge. Though the daughter of a lord, she has
somewhere picked up a knowledge of dark magic and Merlin determines that she
has set her sights on forcing King Arthur to marry her. Her spell isn’t working
because she doesn’t know “Arthur” is actually female, but that apparently won’t
hold her off forever and she is vicious enough to try to murder Guinevere in
front of both King Arthur and Merlin. So Merlin decides the best way to protect
Britt is to let Vivien think she has him under her control. We’ll see how badly
this backfires (since the appearance of Viviane in legend usually=doom for
Merlin).
Laudine: She doesn’t get much time onscreen so it’s hard
to get a read on her. Her worries about Ywain’s loyalty being to Arthur first
and her second aren’t unfounded, because, hello, Ywain has served Britt for two
years and he’s known Laudine for less than a week. Of course he’s going to feel
more loyalty to Britt/Arthur until he’s spent more time with his wife. I’m
surprised nobody makes that point when Britt frets about Laudine asking her
never to call Ywain to Camelot, a request that affronts Britt because she
doesn’t want to lose Ywain as a close friend. Laudine doesn’t feel secure with
her new husband yet, and understandably so, especially since there’s so much at
stake with someone from their castle needing to protect the storm stone and she
married the dude who killed her first husband a few days ago. She's not exactly
in a stable situation here.
Blaise: Briefly shows up at the chapel where the weird
shield that Britt quests for is being kept. He advises Britt that Merlin is
terrible with figuring out how to deal with feelings and to be patient with
him.
Percival: King Pellinore's eldest son and a new knight to
Camelot. He seems relatively level-headed, especially when compared to Lancelot
and his crowd.
The Orkney brothers, Morgan le Fay, Pellinore, Lot,
Calogrenant, Esclados, Nymue, Ector, Kay, Bors, Lionel, Tor and a few others
I'm probably forgetting are mentioned or make cameo apperances.
Overall
This is a solid entry to the series, though my favorite
is still Enlighten. I am enjoying seeing the evolving relationship
between Britt and her knights, and the problems that are coming up now that
Britt's reign is largely established.
Four stars.
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