 | Title: One Knight Only Author: Peter David Publisher: Ace Pages: 373 Synopsis: (courtesy of goodreads) King Arthur--in his modern incarnation as Arthur Penn--has been elected President of the United States. But with political power comes powerful enemies. An assassination attempt against Arthur puts his beloved wife Gwen in a coma--and her only hope lies in the lost Holy Grail. |
I read Story’s copy of the first book in Peter David’s Modern Arthur trilogy (Knight Life) back in college. I remember the basic outline and characters, and that it was entertaining and creative. However in the time since I hadn’t been able to get ahold of books 2 and 3 because they’re out of print and only book 1 is available in ebook form. Story has copies but we live far apart and usually when we see each other we’re busy doing other things. But during my most recent visit to her place (I was there to see her community theater production of Beauty and the Beast because if Arthurian stuff is her jam, Beauty and the Beast is solidly mine) we had some downtime. I had also found a copy of book 3, Fall of Knight, in a used bookstore. Thus, I had the time and inclination to burn through this in a few days. I’ll do Fall of Knight too once I’ve read it.
A note about the author and the series: Peter David, aka “PAD,” is best known for his comic books, licensed fan works, and movie novelizations. This trilogy is his only foray into Arthurian lore, though he has penned other works based on famous tales such as Peter Pan and Oliver Twist. Knight Life was originally published in 1987 and was the first novel he ever sold. It was updated and re-released in 2002 in anticipation of the publication of the other two books in the trilogy. The updated version was the one Story and I read, and the one more widely available today. It is kind of obvious even reading the updated version that it was intended to be a standalone, because it is quite different in tone from One Knight Only.
Spoilers, etc…
The Twist: King Arthur has been reawakened and now has to find his place in modern times. In book 1, he ran for mayor of New York City as step one of Merlin’s grand scheme to get him back into power. There were a lot of fish out of water jokes as medieval, chivalrous Arthur struggled to adapt to the complexities and contradictions of life in late 20th century America. Joining him from the past are Merlin, immortal and aging backwards so he's a too-clever-for-his-own-good kid, and Percival, who drank from the Holy Grail and has thus agelessly weathered the centuries since Camelot’s fall. Guinevere and Lancelot, however, are reincarnations, so Arthur had to win Gwen back all over again. That was several years prior to One Knight Only but all the twists carry over to this book.
The Plot: This book was not at all what I expected, but then I’m not sure what I was expecting. What it really is at its core is Peter David working through his feelings about 9/11, as many creatives did at the time. The fruits of their labors appeared in print over the following few years, and lo, this book was published in 2004. It also means this book is pretty dated and will only continue to grow more so as time passes.
I remember Knight Life being funnier, though this gets in a few witty moments. We're missing Merlin, one of the major sources of humor, for most of this book since he has been turned into a statue.
Actually, a lot has happened in the interim between the two books. Not only is Merlin a statue, but Arthur has been elected President of the United States. A terrorist event equivalent but not exactly identical to 9/11 happened while Arthur was mayor of New York, which brought him to the national stage. The bin Laden-figure (differently named but still obviously Osama bin Laden) is still out there and making threats as Arthur prepares for the State of the Union address.
Gwen, the First Lady, is shot leaving the Capitol Building and becomes a vegetable. Arthur makes a deal with Miss Basil, Merlin's assistant/murderer who turns out to be a basilisk and it's implied also the literal snake from the Garden of Eden. Miss Basil gives Arthur a choice: she can either heal Gwen or kill not!bin Laden. Arthur chooses killing not!bin Laden, and also agrees to step down from the presidency in exchange.
Meanwhile, Percival is out on a quest of his own and stumbles across Gilgamesh (two thirds god, one third moral, as he likes to constantly remind everyone, which is how he's still around and millennia older than Arthur), who appears to have taken possession of the Holy Grail on an island somewhere off South America. He takes Percival prisoner but Percival escapes and makes his way back to tell Arthur what he's discovered. Arthur of course jumps at the chance to heal Gwen so together with his former Chief of Staff Ron and Gwen's personal assistant Nellie they fly to the island for an epic showdown with Gilgamesh, Miss Basil, and not!bin Laden (who of course being the Devil, Miss Basil went back on her promise to kill and instead transformed into another basilisk).
There was a lot more straight up supernatural in the second half of this book rather than a blend of supernatural and modern life as there was in the previous book. I was kind of puzzled by a lot of the author's choices and a good chunk of what happens on Gilgamesh's island is batshit insane. What was there was good and a well-constructed story and the characters were interesting. Though I don't really see any direct analogues to previous Arthurian Grail Quests other than fighting dragons (basilisks in this case) and warriors of myth to get to the Grail, I guess it counts as its own version of a Grail Quest.
The Characters:
Arthur: I admit I like this characterization of Arthur. He's really trying to do the right thing, but he's also very human. Without Merlin's advice he's kind of adrift, and when Gwen gets shot he loses his compass and sense of why he was trying to get into power. So when he sees a chance to possibly restore them both he jumps at it. He ends up in a lot of philosophical arguments with Gilgamesh over bouts of swordfighting. His “the terrorists hate America because we have freedom of speech” monologue sounds almost adorably naive in 2018, the era of Fake News where someone can just choose not to believe facts because those facts don't fit into their previously held worldview and it's considered a legitimate stance to take.
Guinevere: She spends a good chunk of the middle of the book in a coma, but the rest of the time she is pleasant and loyal and everyone loves her as First Lady. (How more people aren't suspicious of their true identities when they have President Arthur Penn married to someone named Gwen Queen I don't know) I also enjoyed her chewing Arthur out at the end for stepping down from the presidency—girl's got some backbone and isn't just a pretty face. Gwen was in an abusive relationship with Lance in the last book and that still occasionally haunts her.
Merlin: God I missed this little shit. He was one of the best things about Knight Life, and he's only in this book at the end. A creature of endless snark, this Merlin is a half-demon and has aged backwards through the centuries so while he was an old man in medieval times now he's a kid. In the interim between books he was turned into a statue by Miss Basil, leaving Arthur bereft without his advice or his magic. They take him along to the Grail island and he is cured of his statue-ness there. So we do get a little of his quips, but not as much as I'd like. In this story his annoying unhelpfulness is kind of endearing instead of irritating because everyone's aware he's doing it on purpose.
Percival: This is one of the Arthurian retellings that has Percival as a black man, in this case a Moor from Islamic Spain who came to Arthur's court instead of having him be from the realm of Faerie. Yes, in a book about post-9/11 America one of the main protagonists is Muslim, which kind of tells you where Peter David stands on the whole “are all Muslims evil?” thing. (Also not!bin Laden only pays lip service to Islam and most of his followers worship him instead.) Percival drank from the Holy Grail and became immortal, and also can heal from anything. It's mentioned this is the only reason he's survived centuries of racism. In the last book we first meet him as a drunken homeless bum, though he has cleaned up since then. Like a lot of Percivals he is infected with wanderlust so even though he is loyal to Arthur he isn't always around and is off having his own adventures.
Elaine of Corbenic: Gwen's faithful assistant Nellie is revealed at the tail end of this book to be a reincarnation of Elaine in a sort of weird way. Turns out she had a drunken three-way with Gwen and Lance in college that first Lance and then a disgruntled reporter want to use video of (because of course Lance taped it without Gwen or Nellie's knowledge; he was that kind of sicko) to tarnish Arthur through Gwen. I suspected from her name that Nellie might be one of the Arthurian Elaines, and I figure an illicit, regretted three-way kind of fits in with the fucked up sexual misadventures Elaine of Corbenic and Lancelot have in the legend where Elaine pretends to be Guinevere in order to sleep with him and satisfy his erotic fantasies at the same time. I suppose we're lucky Nellie doesn't have a kid whose name starts with a G that resulted from that three-way, though admittedly that would have been the icing on the cake.
Lancelot and Morgan le Fay are mentioned but they both died in the last book so of course they don't appear. Poor Mordred doesn't even warrant a mention. I can't figure out if Chief of Staff Ron Cordoba corresponds to anyone in the legend but maybe that will be revealed in Fall of Knight and it will all make sense. Or maybe he really is just a random modern guy who stumbled into this supernatural world of knights and demons and gods and is meant to be the audience surrogate and nothing more.
Overall:
3.5 stars rounded up to 4.
I was entertained, but this also dredged up a lot of memories from the immediate post-9/11 era and made me sad to see where we are now politically—bitterly divided and still arguing about whether anyone other than straight white men have human rights. If only a resurrected King Arthur had been mayor of New York instead of Rudy Giuliani and then got elected president as an Independent. A lot would have been different, that's for sure. Though then he would have stepped down because of a deal with a backstabbing basilisk and gone to fight the hero from the world's first epic poem in order to obtain a magical cup that cures everything including death...so there's that.
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