Review - Kingdom of the Grail

To some extent, this is pretty standard fantasy. The dark vs. the light, and let's throw in the grail to spice things up a bit, and hey, have some battles and a pretty lady. Hell. Let's have nine pretty ladies. And some sex. To spice up our hero, he can do magic and he has yellow eyes!

On the other hand, there's something unique about this because it actually draws on a lot of medieval myth. Using Arthurian myth isn't all that startling, but I've never seen any of that which also draws on The Song of Roland and weaves the two together. I also detected a hint of Marie de France -- one of Charlemagne's companions is called "Milun".

In terms of characters, Roland is interesting, and it's quite interesting to see how his arrogance and sureness from the original poem is a part of his character, while he's still also somewhat likeable. Merlin's involvement in his upbringing is interesting, too, and the way they come together in the end is genuinely touching.

Most of the other characters are largely unremarkable. Sarissa is interesting in a way, and yet I didn't get particularly interested in her. Olivier and Turpin are fun, but minor.

Not a mega-favourite, and I did actually stall with reading it a couple of times, but it's nice enough if you're interested in the fusion of medieval literature it represents.

Review - The Happy Prince And Other Stories

This is a beautiful little collection of stories by Oscar Wilde. I thought I'd never read any of them, but I'd definitely read "The Selfish Giant" before, and some of the others seemed familiar. The stories are all a little like fairy tales, though, so that's probably part of it.

My favourites were "The Nightingale and the Rose" and "The Fisherman and His Soul", I think. All of them are lovely, though. I especially like the beginning of Star-Child. Some of the lines in it are gorgeous, like: "And when they came to the Mountain-Torrent she was hanging motionless in air, for the Ice-King had kissed her." I remember loving "The Selfish Giant" when I was little: I was very Christian then and the ending, with the Christ imagery, used to make me cry. It's still a lovely image to me now, and I like the last line: "And when the children ran in that afternoon, they found the Giant lying dead under the tree, all covered with white blossoms."

These aren't exactly happy stories -- The Happy Prince's heart breaks, the Nightingale dies, the dwarf in The Birthday of the Infanta hates himself, and the Fisherman loses his little Mermaid -- but when you read a lot of old fairy tales you find out that actually, they aren't. I'm glad I picked this up to read.