My life in books

For over a thousand years, people have been creating stories about King Arthur and his companions. For most of that time, the stories have centred on the deeds of the men of The Arthurian mythos (not that there haven't been women in these stories, but with a few exceptions, such as Arthur's sisters Morgana and Morgause, the main function of women in these tales has been to be the reason that the men go off and do things). In the last few decades, this has changed, as more and more writers have begun to tell stories of the women in Arthur's world, from the women's perspective. One emerging group of stories, of which Dawnflight is a fairly early example, focuses on Arthur's wife Guinevere, reimaging her as a warrior queen in her own right.

Dawnflight is the first book of a projected multi-volume series; the author, Kim Headlee, published this first volume in 1999 and has only recently brought out its first sequel. Now newly released and revised, Dawnflight follows Guinevere - here named Gyanhumara - from her upbringing to her marriage to Arthur. Gyan, as she is known, is a Pictish chieftainess, raised in a matrilineal society where power is shared between male and female; Arthur is Romano-British, from a culture in which women are rarely warriors or leaders. As the novel follows their inexorable coming together, we met many of the familiar characters of Arthurian legends, their traditional natures fleshed out and fitted into Headlee's vision of Arthur and Guinevere's world. A mixture of history, mythos and myth (the Irish hero Cuchulainn makes an appearance), it's an interesting take on the old stories and I'm looking forward to reading further volumes.