
We are on surer ground, paradoxically, where the King Arthur of legend has its foundations (i.e., in the clouds). Starting with Geoffrey of Monmouth, a medieval Welsh monk, and continuing with the French troubadors, and culminating
with Thomas Malory's great prose rendition at about the time the printing press was being developed, the body of the legend -- Knights of the Round Table, the Holy Grail, Sir
Lancelot and Guenevere, et al, the quests, black knights, damsels in distress -- all
that came to fruition. Modern authors (with whom I am mainly concerned) have continued the tradition.
- Novels
- Roger Lancelyn Green: King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table.
The original Malory stories retold; you need this (if you are ignorant) as a basis for
everything else. [There is also a classic, by Pyle or somebody like that, which I loved as a child, but I have no idea where that book is now. The pictures were wonderful.]
- David Drake: The Dragon Lord. A Swords and Sorcery version of the legend.
Good stuff, and a nice change (Harlan Ellison loved it). *****
- T.H. White: The Once and Future King. Not my favorite (too 'cute'), sorry....
I found all that stuff about Merlin turning into a fish tiresome although beautifully written. The anachronisms (cricket metaphors, etc.) are egregious and irritating,
although rather witty. The last section, however, is allegorically awesome, with Mordred using guns -- the chirpiness of the 'Sword in the Stone' gives way to the pessimism of 'Candle in the Wind' (and now we know where Sir Elton John stole his
title from).
- Thomas Berger: Arthur Rex. Another one of this type. Well-written,
in a pseudo-archaic style (not always successful grammatically). This stays pretty close to the Malory line, with Lancelot, King Pellinore, etc. but is written from a modern sensibility. Compare this with White, and this version is far more entertaining, and funnier and more cynical (and sexier).
- Mary Stewart: The Crystal Cave / The Hollow Hills / The Last Enchantment.
The Merlin trilogy -- a classic. You just have to read this, since I can't come up with ways to describe it properly. It might fall within the list of the best 100 books of the 20th Century (but maybe not -- there is a lot of competition). *****
- Mary Stewart: The Wicked Day / The Prince and the Pilgrim. More
King Arthur -- the 'true' story of Mordred, and a story outside the mainstream of the cycle.
- Nikolai Tolstoy: The Coming of the King. The saga of Merlin (and yes,
this is a descendent of Count Leo Tolstoy). This book came out in 1989, and was supposed
to be the first of a series, but I haven't seen any others. Absolutely awesome. *****
- Vera Chapman: The King's Demosel / King Arthur's Daughter / The Green Knight.
Romances: "bewitches the reader with its richly woven tapestry of knights, temptresses, and
magicians." OK...
- Gillian Bradshaw: Hawk of May / Kingdom of Summer / In Winter's Shadow.
Gawain's (Gwalchmai's) story; entertaining romance.
- Stephen R. Lawhead: Taliesin / Merlin / Arthur. Excellent trilogy,
with Atlantis thrown in as a bonus. (Pendragon and Grail were written to expand the trilogy, but cover much of the same ground -- overlapping overkill -- with too much religion for my taste, very irritating in fact: much more 'Good News' than I
can stomach. But the political nastiness of kinglets, lords and bishops is well handled. And Grail has some nice spooky witchcraft in a grim forest in Lyonesse -- in fact one of the eeriest scenes in Arthurian fiction.) Just recently, Lawhead wrote a thriller (Avalon) set a few years in our future, in which Arthur is reincarnated as James Arthur Stuart who becomes king when Edward IX commits suicide; the book is Royalist nonsense, but is a nice read, especially the machinations of the republican Prime Minister and his henchwoman (who is Morgan la Fey, of course).
- Richard Monaco: Parsival, or a Knight's Tale. With The Grail War and The Final Quest -- based on the Wolfram (French medieval) cycle, which has all the additives of the Romances, although this series is 'realistic' in the Monty Python sense (mud and peasants, gore and rapine), not bad at all once you get into its style and theme.
- A.A.Attanasio: The Wolf and the Crown, The Eagle and the Sword, The Dragon and the Unicorn, The Serpent and the Grail, so far... Don't know what to make of these well-written but tiresome and confusing books with all the gods and demons and faeries and elementals; mysticism and visions of our industrial future; God (she) as a hermit, Lucifer as a noble exile, the
10000-year-old ladies of the lake; big-bang theory and the sleeping dragon under the earth; Furor (Odin) and Christian monks, the surprisingly civilized poet-king Wesc of the Saxons, and of course Merlin who is the demon Lailoken reborn in the womb of St somebody or other, a nun. (In effect he raped his mother and became his own father --you get the flavor of this series). Worth reading if you are into this sort of stuff. Stay tuned.
- Dee Morrison Meaney: Iseult. The story of Tristan and Iseult. Dragons and
other good stuff.
- Molly Cochran and Warren Murphy: The Forever King. An interesting combination of the Arthurian conflict carried into modern times, interspersed with 'time travel' back to the original times. Well done, but mainly for an early teenage readership. (Gene Wolfe did a similar book, but that was a disappointing effort from that usually imaginative author.)
- Histories
- Joy Chant: The High Kings. More material on Arthur's contemporaries --
kinglets, legendary and partly real (Vortigern, for example) going back to older Celtic times.

CAMELOT: a brief diversion. Yes, there was Tara and Cashel, Dumbarton
Rock and Scone, Tintagel and Glastonbury Tor, etc. -- but these were not "castles" or "palaces" as we think of them. If there was a Camelot, Cadbury hill fort seems to be the most likely site -- extensive Dark Age remains have been excavated.
Link to a general commentary on Celtic Castles by clicking
Here.
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Click here for a very nice N.C.Wyeth illustration.
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