Ah, King Arthur. Has any figure from legend become more… well, legendary? Just looking around at my personal possessions at home, I find that I own books about Arthur (Knight Life, One Knight Only and Fall of Knight), as well as a couple movies (Excalibur and Monty Python and the Holy Grail). I’ve even used it as a jumping-off point for my own works. As a storyteller within my own universe of role-playing games, I have a vampire character based of Sir Tristan and a story centering around the true origins of Excalibur and Merlin was a major turning point in my gaming universe.
Then of course there’s all the other Arthur-related stuff out there. Everything from The Once and Future King to A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, to things like Merlin and The Mists of Avalon and The Sword in the Stone. Truly, one would be hard-pressed to find a greater inspiration for much of Western culture than the stories of King Arthur. Only the Bible comes to mind as a great rival to the title.
Now comes Here Lies Arthur, a young-adult book that tries to tell a more “historical” version of Arthur, making him a borderline barbarian only made great through the efforts of his bard, Myrddin. Most of the major characters of the Arthur stories are here and recognizable, though often with names different from what we’re used to (Sir Kay is named Cei, Sir Bevedere is Bedwyr, Percival is Perdur). Absent are Morgan le Fey, Modred and Lancelot (who, from what I recall, was originally a French character who got added to the mythos around the 12th century), but they aren’t missed.
The tale is told through the eyes of a young sometimes-girl, Gwyna. She turns up when her master’s farm is attacked by Arthur’s raiders. She escapes and swims to safety where Myrddin rescues her. Impressed by her ability to hold her breath, he comes up with a plan to have her hide under water and pass a certain sword onto a certain barbarian warlord (though as well all know, watery tarts distributing swords is no basis for a system of government).
From there Gwyna winds up spending a great deal of time hanging out with Arthur’s merry band of raiders. Most of this time she spends in the company of Myrddin, learning all she can from the old man (mostly learning about the power of stories, something fans of Terry Pratchett will find to be a familiar concept). She’s present for some of the great moments of the myth, like the introduction of the Round Table and is the one who finds out that Arthur’s wife is not perhaps as loyal to him as he might wish.
The book is well-written and entertaining and obviously heavily researched. It tells a good tale of what life might’ve been like during the time after the Romans left England but before the Saxons took over completely. It offers a good explanation for how much of the Arthurian legends might’ve come to be.
The one slightly weak point for me was the character of Gwyna. She’s mostly a passive observer who doesn’t do terribly much to advance the story (though she does help a young girl named Peri come to a realization about herself). Mostly Gwyna is just sort of there, watching and listening and being our eyes and ears. There’s nothing really wrong with this per se, but a better story might’ve been done through the viewpoint of Myrddin.
Still, for anyone looking for a more historical, but still fictional, version of Arthur, you might well enjoy this book.
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