Arthurian Heaven

As Gentle Reader may recall, in the course of my quest for a copy of Naomi Mitchison's incomparable Arthurian novel To the Chapel Perilous, I discovered that my former medieval studies professor, Arthurian scholar Raymond H. Thompson, had served as consulting editor for a series of reprints of lost classics (and some new pearls) of Arthurian-based fiction.

I managed to acquire several of the books last year, including, of course, the afore-mentioned jewel by Mitchison.

I am now totally delirious with the joy of being able to report that my beloved partner glaurung has actually acquired all but two of the books published as part of this series, and as soon as I can render them readable*, I will no doubt disappear into some vague and mystical place not far from Glastonbury Tor and devour them.

For those with any interest in the field, my latest acquisitions are:

Percival and the Presence of God, by Jim Hunter. (6201, Chaosium, 1997); reprint of the 1978 Faber and Faber edition.

Arthur, the Bear of Britain, by Edward Frankland. (6202, Chaosium/Green Knight Publishing co-publication, 1998); reprint of the 1944 McDonald & Co. edition.

Kinsmen of the Grail, by Dorothy James Roberts. (6204, Green Knight Publishing, 2000); reprint of the 1963 Little, Brown and Company edition.

The Life of Sir Aglovale, by Clemence Housman. (6205, Green Knight Publishing, 2000); reprint of the 1905 Methuen & Co. Ltd. edition.

The Doom of Camelot, edited by James Lowder. (6206, Green Knight Publishing, 2000); original anthology.

Exiled From Camelot, by Cherith Baldry. (6207, Green Knight Publishing, 2001); original novel.

The Pagan King, by Edison Marshall. (6208, Green Knight Publishing, 2001); reprint of the 1959 Doubleday & Co. edition.

Legends of the Pendragon, edited by James Lowder. (6211, Green Knight Publishing, 2002); original anthology.

The Follies of Sir Harald, by Phyllis Ann Karr. (6212, Green Knight Publishing, 2001); original novel.

The two books remaining to be collected from the series are:

The Merriest Knight: The Collected Arthurian Tales of Theodore Goodridge Roberts, edited by Mike Ashley. (6210, Green Knight Publishing, 2001); original collection of Roberts' stories, including previously unpublished material.

Pendragon, by Wilfred Barnard Faraday. 96213, Green Knight Publishing, 2002); reprint of the 1930 Methuen & Co. Ltd. edition.

Colour me happy.



*As Gentle Reader may know, I suffer from profound environmental illness, which makes book reading a bit of a challenge, as many kinds of papers and inks emit volatile gases at levels too low for the average person to detect, but which can make me profoundly ill. Added to that, I am also severely affected by many of the artificial components of things like perfume and scented personal care and air-freshening products, which many of these books, being used copies, have absorbed from, say, being read by someone wearing hand lotion or being read in a room where a scented candle or one of those hideously poisonous air freshening products was present. (And yes, I can smell your hand lotion or your air freshener on a book you may have read five years ago.) Many books I acquire must be heated gently over a long period of time to drive out as many volatiles as possible before I can read them. Sigh. It's sheer torture knowing that you actually have a book you've been waiting impatiently to read, but knowing that it will be at least another couple of months before it's safe to go ahead and read it.

Pendragon in perpetuity

Since I've started the day on an Arthurian note, I shall continue in that vein. One of my Christmas gift books was the first volume in a series called The Descendants of Merlin by Irene Radford. I have since then acquired and read the entire series - at least as far as it goes to date, I don't know if the author considers the series finished. The five books are:

Guardian of the Balance
Guardian of the Trust
Guardian of the Vision
Guardian of the Promise
Guardian Of The Freedom

The premise of the series is that Merlin sired a daughter as a result of a magical Great Marriage-style rite with his priestess counterpart, and that this daughter, once grown, bore a child sired by Arthur himself. The resulting lineage is that of the true Pendragons of Britain, and they have acted throughout time, either openly or secretly, to preserve the island against threats, both magical and mundane.

The premise of a secret society or lineage that watches over the fate of Britain is not a new one, nor is the notion that Britain has at times required supernatural help of the pagan variety to survive. A case in point would be the lingering belief that Sir Francis Drake sought help in defeating the Spanish Armada from a coven of sea witches who conjured the great storm that scattered the invading fleet. And then there are the traditions concerning the Templars and the Scottish Rite Freemasons, the notion that early Norman kings of England followed some variation on the ritual king-sacrifice, and so on. In particular, the idea of Merlin, Arthur, or both somehow continuing to guard Great Britain is a reasonably common one in Arthurian literature and in fiction dealing with alternative history fantasies of Britain in general. There's a lot of material to play with in the genre, and Radford has certainly drawn of a fair amount of what's available, even going so far as to bring the Illuminati into her final volume, set at the time of the American revolution.

On whole, I must say that while I read and enjoyed the books, I'm not sure that I thought well enough of the entire series to recommend it. The first volume, which is a retelling of the core story of Merlin and Arthur, and hence sets up the means by which the lines of both can continue throughout history, is in my opinion the most interesting book of the series. The next two, set in the England of King John and the early part of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, are good - in fact, the second book, with its very memorable protagonist, the powerful sorceress Resmiranda, is possibly the best of the series. The series begins to unravel somewhat in the fourth volume, which deals with the second half of Elizabeth's reign and the religious discord between Catholics and Huguenots in France, and it has become a little tedious in the fifth volume, in which the Pendragon legacy divides and some of Merlin's descendants head off to protect America instead.

There are a number of reasons why the series doesn't quite work well enough for me. Some of it may well be that I've been spoiled by writers such as Judith Tarr and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro in the realm of alternative historical fantasy. Very few authors meet the standards they have set for exhaustive historical research seamlessly blended into the story. Also, it seemed to me that in focusing more and more over time on division and corruption within the Pendragon line itself, the later books became somewhat overly complicated as the author tries to link the factional discords and plots within the Pendragon line to the already complex political intrigues of the Elizabethan and Georgian eras.

While the protagonists are strong in all five volumes (indeed, the protagonist of the fifth and otherwise weakest book has a very strong and enjoyable hero, a young woman named Georgie who spends much of the novel passing as an elite mercenary soldier), the characterizations of the supporting characters are sometimes weak and inconsistent - they are whatever the story needs them to be at the time instead of reacting organically as themselves. Again, this is most obvious in the fifth volume, where Georgie's brother Drake is heroic and weak by turns, without much to justify his changes, while Georgie's niece and the likely future Pendragon Emily is alternately horrified and adoring of her aunt's unconventionality, depending on whether the plot requires her to be susceptible or resistant to the blandishments of one of the villains within the Pendragon clan who seeks to marry her and turn her to the Dark Side.

So, in all, an interesting premise, moderately enjoyable to read, but on the weak side in several rather important areas.