Reviews - Fionavar, The King Awakes

[wilderthan]

First, a link to my love post for The Fionavar Tapestry on overlooked, here.

And a review!

The King Awakes (Janice Elliott)

I picked this up somewhat randomly at a big book sale, and didn't really pay much attention to the blurb: it had King Arthur in it, that was enough for me. But this was more interesting than I'd expected. Post-apocalyptic/dystopic world, with the return of Arthur post-apocalypse? Not something I'd expected to see.

Ultimately, it was a little disappointing. Like so many Arthurian stories, Arthur wasn't the central character. I quite liked Red, and the world, but Arthur ended up feeling somewhat tacked on, and his final glory was spent on a comparatively small thing.

Interesting to see, but it didn't do as much with the idea as I'd hoped.

Comments

[sweet_sparrow]

Might want to fix the link, sweetie. ^-^

This sounds like a fairly interesting book, is it just the way Arthur is handled and lack of idea-explorating that bothers you?

[wilderthan]

Ugh, obviously forgot to put the link in... O my brain.

It was a bit... because it's Arthur, you expect him to do something big, and then he kinda doesn't, and the world's really still the same, so... it's disappointing. A bit anti-climactic.

[sweet_sparrow]

I broke my HTML three times and needed three proofreadings to catch them all this morning. I quite know the feeling.

Mmm, yeah. That does sound like it's anti-climactic. Not that every book needs to end with world-chaning big events, but...

[wilderthan]

Yeah, it was interesting for what it did with Arthur (I'm tempted to write post-apocalyptic return-of-Arthur now!) but it didn't seem to go anywhere.

[wilderthan]

Apparently, there's a sequel, which isn't mentioned anywheeere in the book and I only found by googling. If I can get my hands on it, it might resolve some of my dissatisfaction.