Crystal Cave Discussion

This is part 3 of 3 in SamoaPhoenix and my joint review/discussion of Mary Stewart's The Crystal Cave.  My review can be found here and SamoaPhoenix's review can be found here.

Our discussion begins right after I sent my review to SamoaPhoenix and she finished reading it.  I had already read her review earlier in the day to prep it for posting.

Warning for Spoilers

Samoa Phoenix Guest Review: The Crystal Cave

Part 2 of 3.  My review can be found here and the discussion of the book between myself and SamoaPhoenix can be found here.

~Storyteller Knight

Title: The Crystal Cave Author: Mary Stewart Publisher: William & Morrow Pages: 527 Synopsis: (from the publisher) Almost everyone knows Merlin as the dark, brooding figure mysteriously associated with Camelot and King Arthur’s court. But who, really, was Merlin? Was he the enchanter of fairy tales, the magician of the black robe and pointed hat and wand? Or was he the king and prophet of old legends of Brittany and Wales? How did a man reputed to be the bastard son of the Prince of Darkness, and condemned to death as a child of the Devil, become the chief architect of the first united Britain? Mary Stewart’s answers to these provocative questions form a spell-binding novel that catapults the reader into fifth-century Britain—a land uncertainly divided by conflicting loyalties, political and spiritual; a land riddled with rumor real and planted, and spear-alert with superstitious fear. Into this strange world was born Merlin, bastard son of Niniane, daughter of the King of South Wales, and an unknown father. The novel opens in Wales when Merlin is seven, and closes in Cornwall, at Tintagel, with the begetting of Arthur.

My aunt and uncle were moving to a smaller place and my uncle gave me his copies of Mary Stewart's Arthurian books. I mentioned it to Story, who suggested the joint project we are on now.

Spoilers!, etc…

The Crystal Cave Review

So, not wholly on accident, SamoaPhoenix and I ended up reading the same Arthurian retelling at the same time.  So we decided to have some fun with this.  SamoaPhoenix and I have both written up a review of this book (to be posted separately) and then we're going to to have a discussion about the book.  So consider this Part 1 of 3.  SamoaPhoenix's guest review can be found here and our discussion of the book here.

~Storyteller Knight

Title: The Crystal Cave Author: Mary Stewart Publisher: Fawcett Crest Pages: 385 Synopsis: (from the publisher) Who was Merlin?  Was the famed magician of Camelot and King Arthur's court really a sinister, all-powerful being from another world?  Was he truly a prince of Darkness? Or was he a man with the passions of other mortals?  A man with unique intelligence and unusual gifts? Why was he so feared?  How did he come by his occult powers?  Why was the crystal cave so important to him? Mary Stewart's novel brings to vibrant life one of the world's great legends and sheds a fascinating new light on the turbulence and mystery of 5th-century Britain. In This enthralling work, Mary Steward once more shows her own great wizardry.  Again she reveals those qualities of suspense and romantic adventure which have made her one of the world's most widely read novelists.

So, just as a heads up-- I have already read book four of this series (The Wicked Day).  I'm going to try and not spoil anything that goes on and will put up warnings if I get into anything about that book.  But do know that I read it several years ago and my memory of what on is a little fuzzy, so some stuff might slip in.

Also, I'm not even going to touch on the covers of this series because it has been reprinted so many times with so many pretty covers.  

Warning for Spoilers 

Guinevere, The Legend in Autumn Review

Title: Guinevere: The Legend in Autumn Author: Persia Woolley Publisher: Pocket Books Pages: 423 Synopsis: (from the publisher) Surrounded by traitors, trapped by destiny, Britain's spirited Queen Guinevere recounts the last, dramatic years of Camelot.  At King Arthur's side, she reigned over the fabled heroes of the Round Table while the restless and impassioned knights undertook the Quest for the Holy Grail.  Even as her favored men set off on their perilous journey.  Guinevere's heartbreaking honesty, courage and integrity were challenged by those she loved most.  Mordred, the stepson she raised, waged a primal battle against Arthur-- and brought the kingdom to a shattering end.  Torn between duty and desire as he rescued his Queen, condemned to the stake for treason, Lancelot swept her into a forbidden idyll at Joyous Gard.  And with Morgan le Fay, the evil beauty she feared most in all of Britain, Guinevere bartered her soul to save Arthur and Camelot from the furies of fate.

Variant Covers:

I love the new cover of this book.  I may buy it just to have it, because that is gorgeous.  Unfortunately, I currently own the cover that I was embarrassed to be seen out in public with.

Warning for Spoilers.  Also, longest review yet.

Queen of the Summer Stars Review

Title: Queen of the Summer Stars  Author: Persia Woolley  Publisher: Poseidon Press Pages: 415 Synopsis: (From Sourcebooks) In a country still reeling from the collapse of the Roman Empire, the young King Arthur and his wife Guinevere struggle to keep the barbarians at bay even as they establish the Fellowship of the Round Table. The spirited and outspoken Guinevere skillfully combats an accusation of planning to poison Arthur in a country simmering with unrest and scandal. But Guinevere’s greatest battles are dangers Arthur cannot see—ones she’ll have to fight on her own. And all the while, she must reconcile her thirst for freedom with her duties as queen, and her growing love for Lancelot with her loyalty to her husband. Vibrantly human and touchingly real, Guinevere reigns as a woman poised to discover the true peril and promise of the human heart.

So what I'm doing, when I post a review, is post the book using the cover that I own.  Of course, several Arthurian retellings have gone through multiple prints.  The Guinevere Triology has three different cover sets as of right now. 

Here are the covers for Child of the Northern Spring:

And the two remaining covers for Queen of the Summer Stars:

See what I meant in the Child of the Northern Spring review about the romance and fantasy covers?  I hope this latest set is more to Woolley's liking.

Warning for Spoilers

Child of the Northern Spring Review

Title: Child of the Northern Spring Author: Persia Woolley Publisher: Sourcebooks Pages: 537 Synopsis: (from the publisher) Among the first took look at the story of Camelot through Guinevere's eyes, Woolley sets the traditional tale in the time of its origin, after Britain has shattered into warring fiefdoms.  Hampered by neither fantasy nor medieval romance, this young Guinevere is a feisty Celtic tomboy who sees no reason why she must learn to speak Latin, wear dresses, and go south to marry that king.  But legends being what they are, the story of Arthur's rise to power soon intrigues her, and when they finally meet, Guinevere and Arthur form a partnership that has lasted for 1500 years. This is Arthurian epic at its best-- filled with romance, adventure, authentic Dark Ages detail, and wonderfully human people.

Every time I read that blurb, I find myself kinda turned-off by Persia Woolley’s rather high-and-mighty attitude towards fantasy and romance (this isn’t just the blurb, I’ve seen this sentiment in her interviews and in the author’s notes and reader questions). I mean, I get it that she’s writing historical fiction, but there’s no reason to get down fantasy or romance.

Then I remember that the hardcover of the Guinevere trilogy was published with a fantasy cover and the paperback with a romance cover and how the whole series was pretty much buried under Mists of Avalon and realize that Woolley has every right to be frustrated with fantasy and romance.

Warning for Spoilers

SamoaPhoenix Guest Review: Gawain and Lady Green

Hi all!  ::waves::  I, being the flakiest flake you've ever met, got distracted midway through my review of Child of the Northern Sping by some straight up fantasy books.  And then Camp NaNoWriMo started and free time got sucked down a black hole.  I'll be back in the swing of things come September.

In the meantime!  My good friend and partner in crime, SamoaPhoenix, who can be found on fictionpress but is probably more famously known for her Beauty and the Beast retellings on fanfiction (I highly recommend everything she's ever written).  Also, she has a TV Tropes page (it's empty, but it's there), so you know she must be awesome.  She is a lover of all things Beauty and the Beast, which translates into a great love of Gawain because the Loathly Lady story is basically Beauty and the Beast with the genders reversed.  She is reviewing Gawain and Lady Green by Ann Eliot Crompton, sequel to Merlin's Harp (more of a midquel, actually) which I reviewed here.  Please give her a warm welcome and enjoy her review.

~Storyteller Knight

Title: Gawain and Lady Green Author: Ann Eliot Crompton Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire Pages: 216 Synopsis: (from the book)  Gwyneth wasn’t supposed to fall in love with Gawain. Not like this. Gawain was the May King—a sacrifice offered to the Goddesss for a bountiful harvest in return.  Gwyneth knows this.  His fate has been decided by powers beyond her control. But the warmth of his touch and the taste of his lips have blurred the lines of what she knows to be true. Now Gwyneth is willing to risk everything to keep Gawain alive, even if it means losing him forever…

Hello everyone, I’m SamoaPhoenix. Since Story is busy with NaNo Camp for two months and I just finished an Arthurian retelling, I thought I’d jump in with a review. While I am not the Arthurian expert Story is, I do know a lot about most of the more famous legends.  Especially Gawain (he and Gaheris are my favorites). So you may see a few other reviews from me pop up here and there, because believe it or not there are some Arthurian retellings I’ve read that she hasn’t. Le gasp!

Since Story began her review of Merlin’s Harp (by the same author and set in the same universe as this book) with a comment on the change in covers, I will do so as well. The original cover is a very standard one for an Arthurain tale: plain, with a painting of people in medieval dress. 

The new cover actually has pictures of Gawain and Lady Green on it. The cover is also mostly green!  I am more a fan of the new cover as it led me to purchase the book in the first place and actually has something to do with what happens in the book. However: two problems I see. 1. The new cover looks a little “young” for what I feel the intended audience is. There is a lot of sex in this book. Not graphic, but it is mentioned frequently enough that even in early high school I might have felt uncomfortable reading it (Story will tell me this is because I was a prude). That aside, this cover looks aimed at middle schoolers, not high schoolers. Not sure I want my future middle school child reading this.  2. It peeves me when cover designers don’t bother to read the book they are making a cover for. It is mentioned a lot in the book that Lady Green has red hair. Would it have killed them to actually find a redhead to put on the cover? Yeesh.

Anyway, on to the review! (Spoilers Ahoy!)

The Kevin Of It

I finished reading Persia Woolley’s Child of the Northern Spring, but the review of that probably won’t be up for another week because I also finished writing the Arthurian retelling I’ve been working on for nearly seven years.  So, mostly I’ll be working on typing that up instead of flipping through Child of the Northern Spring.  But first, I want to comment on something I found odd in the book and acknowledge that I may owe Marion Zimmer Bradley an apology (just a small one). 

Folks will remember from my Mists of Avalon review that I had major issues with the character of Kevin.  Mainly because I thought he was a major jerk who got off easy but also because I found the name choice to be a little… odd.  And jarring.  And I soundly mocked that name in my review.

Well, Persia Woolley also has a character named Kevin in her Guinevere Trilogy.  He is also crippled (born that way instead of injured like Bradley’s Kevin).  And while less jarring in Woolley’s book than in Bradley’s (Woolley uses the more modern spellings of the characters as opposed to Bradley who used the older ones and Woolley’s Kevin is actually Irish while I don’t think it’s ever said for Bradley’s), the whole thing got me thinking that maybe there was a character in the Arthurian Mythos named Kevin whom I wasn’t aware of.

Mists of Avalon was published in 1982.  Child of the Northern Spring was published in 1987.  Woolley says in an interview that she was disappointed that her trilogy was published so close to Mists that it caused her books to not only be overshadowed, but printed as sci-fi/fantasy or woman’s romance when it was intended to be historical fiction.  So, from that and the fact that the books were published within five years of each other, I can’t imagine that Woolley drew much of anything from Mists of Avalon for the first book (There’s a note in the preface of the second about drawing from Mists in regards to Morgan Le Fay’s character).  Maybe, maybe I could see the publisher asking that the character be renamed to jump on the success of Bradley’s book, but that’s just far-fetched speculation on my part drawn from my jaded cynicism of the publishing industry after what happened with the Twilight ‘phenomenon’. 

So, Kevin.  Before mocking that choice of name in my Mists of Avalon review, I checked to make sure that there was no minor Arthurian character named Kevin whom I had simply never heard of.  I searched the internet (Christopher Bruce’s Arthurian Name Dictionary, Early British Kingdoms and general Googling).  I searched my books (The New Encyclopedia of Arthurian Legends, The Oxford Guide to Arthurian Legends, The Encyclopedia of Arthurian Legends and the Arthurian Companion).  I searched for Kevin, Caoimhín, Caoimhghín, Cóemgein and Coemgenus.  Nothing.  That was when I decided it was safe to puzzle over (with mocking overtones) why Bradley had gone with that name when a- it was really out of place with how she was naming the rest of her characters and b- had no ties to any form of the original legend. 

Seeing the name appear again in a book which was published so soon after Mists of Avalon got me wondering again.  And after double checking, I still can’t find anyone in the Arthurian myth with any name resembling Kevin.  I even shifted gears and searched to see if there was any Kevin in Irish Mythology who had been transplanted to Britain.  The best I could come up with was St. Kevin of Glendalough who, as far as I can tell, never travelled to Britain (unlike St. Patrick) and was very much a Christian unlike the Kevins in Bradley and Woolley’s books, who are both pagans.  So, that seems unlikely.

I’m thinking I may learn more about this character as I read either Mary Stewart’s Merlin Trilogy or Rosemary Sutcliff’s Sword at Sunset.  My best guess is that the character was introduced in one of the modern retellings that are so often hailed as greats or inspiration by authors writing from Mists of Avalon and onwards.  If not, then it will simply remain a mystery—like who first wrote Morgan Le Fay as Mordred’s mother instead of Morgause.  One that I look forward to answering as I read and expand my Master List.

King Maker: Knights of the Breton Court I Review

Title: King Maker: The Knights of the Breton Court I Author: Maurice Broaddus Publisher: Angry Robot Pages: 385 Synopsis: (from the publisher) From the drug gangs of downtown Indianapolis, the one true king will arise.  The King Arthur myth gets dramatically replayed through the destiny of street hustler King, as he tried to unite the crack dealers, gangbangers, and the very real monsters lurking amongst them, to do the right thing.  This is an edgy, fantastical debut, genuinely unlike anything you've ever read before.

I feel the need to add this disclaimer: I spent a lot of time while reading this book examining my privilege as a white, middle class female.  A lot of times I had to stop myself and ask ‘Is this character really as horrible as I think or am I just making bad assumptions’.  A lot of times, I concluded the later.  I changed my mind a lot when it came to my sympathies for character (you will not see that change reflected in the review because it mostly happened with characters not related to the legend).  That said, I still didn’t like this book. 

Warning for Spoilers and a 3000 Word Review

In Which Story Contemplates the Possibility of King Arthur Star Wars Style

So, I'm reading Maurice Broaddus' King Maker, which is a modern day, reincarnation retelling.  And there is this fantastic line that I cannot stop thinking about (pg 39).

Merle waved his fingers in front of him as if with a sudden display of jazz hands.  "These are not the droids you are looking for."

Warning for small spoilers and Story's insanity under the cut