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UK Authors - Sci-fi & fantasy |
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Guenevere Part I: The Queen of the Summer Country |
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 Guenevere Part I:The Queen of the Summer Country by Rosalind Miles Simon & Schuster 610 pages, 2000 ISBN 0671018124 Reviewed by our UK Editor Rachel A. Hyde Read our review of Guenevere Part II The story of King Arthur is as stretchy as taffy. Different people twist and pull it any way they choose to make it the way they want it to be. We have had Bernard Cornwell’s gritty Dark Ages, the mediaeval dream world of Mallory, Vera Chapman and the TV miniseries Merlin and the New Age vision of paganism, giving way to Christianity of Marion Zimmer Bradley. Rosalind Miles has mixed all these ingredients together to create her Guenevere trilogy, with something to please fans of all the versions. Here we have a tale that falls midway between courtly and gritty. The costumes and most of the sets are Mallory but with more than a touch of Mary Stewart. We have a villainous Merlin for a change, and a pleasant but rather weak and indecisive Arthur and Guenevere. The heroine comes from the Summer Country where, for time immemorial, Queens have governed and kept down their menfolk. Her mother was the last of the warrior queens and Guenevere has learnt nothing of such arts, as her mother believed that warfare was changing. Christianity is on its way to eradicate the pagans forever and with it the rule of men and subjugation of women. Which way will Arthur swing as he creates his new golden age with his queen? Miles has mixed around everybody else’s work and comes up with something that has a little of everything and something of its own as well. Watch this space for a review of the second novel in the trilogy. |
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