Camelot's Blood

Earlier today I finally finished Sarah Zettel's Camelot series with the final book, Camelot's Blood. I bought the book from Ebay right after finishing Under Camelot's Banner; when I found out the final book was Laurel's story, I just couldn't wait for it! I was a bit sad that it was only published in Britain for some reason, as the cover art is different from the other three (my copies of the other three are all from Luna books).

Camelot's Blood was a bit different from the other three books in a few ways: this was the only book that featured a girl who was previously introduced (Laurel is Lynet from Under Camelot's Banner's sister), and this is the only book of the four in which they (in this case Laurel and Agravain) are married at the beginning (marriage was a reward at the end of the other three books).

Camelot's Blood picks up after Under Camelot's Banner. Laurel was named queen of Cambryn, but abdicated in favour of Lynet. At Arthur and Guinevere's request, Laurel agrees to marry Sir Agravain, knight of the round table and heir to Gododdin. But during their wedding night, news arrives that Agravain's father is dying and Gododdin is going to be attacked by Morgaine's armies. And so Laurel and Agravain hatch a desperate plan to save Gododdin and at the same time restore its lost honour.

I loved Agravain. I knew he was going to be tough to match with someone (seeing how he was always angry and very closed to other people), but Laurel was a good match for him. Beneath his composed exterior was a very complex character, intelligent and caring.

I thought Camelot's Blood was a really good read, but I thought the ending could have been a bit better. There were a few loose ends that were never really resolved; when all was said and done, it seemed to end a bit abruptly. But otherwise, Camelot's Blood was a great read, and a good ending to the whole Camelot series.

Under Camelot's Banner

Several years ago, I found the first book in this series, For Camelot's Honor. At the time, this book was available in trade paperback, so I decided to wait until it was available as a mass market paperback. Unfortunately, that never happened; the other two books, In Camelot's Shadow and Under Camelot's Banner disappeared from bookshelves. I was lucky to find In Camelot's Shadow in a used bookstore in Toronto over a year ago. Under Camelot's Banner I found on ebay.

These books by Sarah Zettel tell the tales of the four brothers, Sir Gawain, Sir Geraint, Sir Gareth and Sir Agravain, as well as the stories of the four ladies who capture their hearts. Under Camelot's Banner tells the story of Sir Gareth and the Lady Lynet.

War is brought to the doorstep of Lynet's home. When her father is murdered, it falls to her to bring back the High Queen Guinevere to settle the dispute. Guinevere is the true heir to Lynet's lands, but she has long been absent in Camelot. With her sister remaining behind as a hostage, and aided by a magic mirror, Lynet must make the journey herself to bring the Queen back to her home and right the wrongs that have been done.

Along the way, Lynet meets Gareth, squire to Sir Lancelot. Upon hearing her plight, he pledges himself to help her. But due to Lynet's past, she does not believe in the honour of Camelot's men. Will Lynet trust him to help her save her land?

Under Camelot's Banner was an amazing story. I can't wait to get my hands on the final book to read the conclusion of this four volume epic!

List Update

I thought that now would be a great time to do another List Update. It is now crunch time with school, so I haven't really had time to read things that I want to. So there are currently 112 books on the list, with two more on their way, and I am definitely thinking about picking up another. This means that I am looking at 114-115 books within the next week or two. These last three have a bit of a story behind them, so I figured I would share.

I have had an ebay account for quite awhile now. I signed up sometime last year, but then didn't have time to sign up for Paypal. Without Paypal, I didn't bother ordering anything off ebay, so I was reasonably safe. And then last Wednesday, I was over at a friend's house, and decided randomly to sign up for Paypal. You see, I was randomly surfing ebay, and found a book that I wanted. I wandered over to Paypal's website, and discovered that I can sign up and immediately start shopping on ebay. And so I did. Sarah Zettel's Under Camelot's Banner is on its way! (Of course, while searching around a bit, I found out that there is a fourth book to this series, Camelot's Blood, so that might be added to the list as well in the near future...)

The other two books that I mentioned are sort of connected in that it is Amazon.com's fault that I have bought/am planning to buy them. I was wasting time last night, and found that Amazon.com had recommendations for me (I must have signed up with them sometime in the past, but I do not remember why). So I looked to see what they were trying to sell me, and discovered that I could manipulate their recommendations, based off of rating what I own and what I've read. So I spent a lot of time last night doing so.

While I was wandering through the many recommendations, I noticed one author come up a few times: Patricia Briggs. It was a weird coincidence, as I had just found someone's blog and they had talked about books by Patricia Briggs. So of course, now I'm curious, and I'm planning on checking the book out over the next few days (there's a copy in Chapters right now, so if I have a chance over the next few days I'll stop and see what it's all about).

Finally, there was another recommendation for a David Farland book that I had never heard of before. It sounded interesting, so I did a quick search on ebay, and found a rather cheap copy. Worlds of the Golden Queen is on its way!

There was a fourth book that I was interested in buying, Warrior by Marie Brennan. But it turns out that I own it already; it was originally published under a different title, Doppelganger (I originally thought it was the third book in the series, but it looks like there will only be the two).

So that is the news right now. Luckily school is almost over, so I should be able to tackle some of these books soon!

Sword of the Rightful King

I was pretty excited to read Jane Yolen's Sword of the Rightful King. The synopsis sells the book as a sort of alternate history of the King Arthur Legend: the mage, Merlinnus, creates the sword in the stone as a test for Arthur, who is already High King of Britain.  But someone else pulls the sword from the stone!!! While that is, in the end, what does happen, this book is very much NOT an alternative history of the story. 

What happens is that Gawaine is summoned to his mother's (Morgause) chambers.  She tries to persuade him to stay home and rule as king of the north, but he refuses; he wants to return to Arthur and Cadbury (Camelot).  So she sends some of his brothers with him (just not the youngest).

I'm going to note here that Gawaine seemed like the main character.  But after this beginning stuff, the narrative largely moved away from him, which was rather disappointing.

Meanwhile, a boy named Gawen also shows up at Arthur's court.  Gawen wants to be trained as a knight, but ends up being told to study with Merlinnus.  It's around here that Merlinnus also has the idea to create the Sword in the Stone as a test for Arthur and a means to unite all of Britain under his rule.  The narrative largely switches to follow Gawen from here rather than Gawaine (and it's a bit confusing because their names are so very similar).

Morgause finds out about this test and conspires to get one of her sons to pull it instead. She shows up at Cadbury to try to work some magic on it; that fails, thanks to Merlinnus and Gawen working on a protection spell.  Then she bespells almost the entire court, and attempts to make Arthur fall in love with her.  Thankfully for all, her scheme is discovered by Gawen, and she leaves.

Then at Midsummer's Eve, when magic is supposed to be most potent, everyone attempts to pull the sword from the stone.  Arthur is the one who succeeds, so everyone is happy.  But he confronts Merlinnus later to tell him that it is a different sword he pulled from the stone. It turns out that Gawen managed to pull it out by melting butter and getting the sword to slide out (this was disappointingly not shown to us, the reader - all we knew was that Gawen went to the kitchen and *did something*); Gawen replaced the sword with another one for some reason.  Arthur claims Gawen is now king, but Gawen reveals that she is in fact a woman and so cannot be king.  Arthur then decides to marry her, making them both High King and Queen of Britain (and uniting the two people who have pulled swords from the stone).

For the most part, this was a fine retelling of the King Arthur myth.  But by leaving out till the very end the fact that someone else did pull the sword from the stone, I felt cheated by the story thanks to the synopsis making me think someone else pulling the sword was the actual main plot point that would get the story going.  The whole sword in the stone took way too long to get going in the book as well, making me sort of lose interest halfway through.  Same with the way the book started with Gawaine and then abandoned his narrative - that actually made me feel cheated as well.

On the plus side though, Yolen has a fine writing style that was easy to read.  I think if the synopsis had been better (and not sort of misleading), I would have been a lot happier reading this book.

Ever World: Enter the Enchanted

I guess I'm still quite interested in Ever World as I just powered through book 3! This time around it was April, Senna's half-sister, who was narrating. And they had a run-in with Merlin and some of the knights of the round table (Galahad, Gawain, Perceval, Gareth and Kay in particular). In the spirit of Sarah Zettel's Camelot series, I found Enter the Enchanted to be quite a good read, especially since it gave a new look at many of the people I enjoyed from Zettel's series.

This time around, the gang has found Senna. But they are attacked by a dragon, which is sent off by Sir Galahad. They find themselves the guests of the knight at one of his castles. Unfortunately, they are not the only guests as Loki has also shown up, demanding Senna.

Enter the Enchanted had a lot more adventure than Land of Loss. Rather than wandering around lost, this time around the gang seemed to make more decisions for themselves. And while my favourite narrator is still David, April was a lot better than Christopher. So I guess that means Jalil will be next in Realm of the Reaper.

A Companion to Wolves

Originally I was going to read Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear's A Companion to Wolves right after Steal the Dragon, but then Camelot's Blood showed up. So as soon as I finished reading that, I went on to A Companion to Wolves. I originally discovered it on Bear's website, where she said they were planning on having it be a novella satirising the whole animal companion genre, but it took on a life of its own. And so, intrigued, I decided I had to read it. And it was definitely worth reading! A Companion to Wolves is a beautiful book about the interspecies relationship between a man and his wolf.

Isolfr is the son of a nobelman who is tithed to the wolfmen who defend the people from trolls and wyverns. He falls in love with the puppy Viradechtis, who is destined to be a wolf-queen. It is the story of their growing up and growing into the roles destiny has cast for them, amongst the threat of a war against the trolls. But it is also a book about sacrifices, and the sacrifices that both must make in order to stay together.

My biggest complaint about the book was the names. All of the characters have Norse, Anglo-Saxan and Germanic names, which can be a bit confusing because many are rather similar. But to make matters worse, all of the wolf brothers take on a new name once they bond with their wolves! For instance, the main character is Njall for the first while, and then becomes Isolfr. It gets very confusing, and about half way through the book I decided that if I couldn't remember who someone was, then they weren't worth remembering! But other than that, I really enjoyed it.

While I absolutely loved A Companion to Wolves, I cannot recommend it to everyone. There are aspects of the book of a sexual nature that not everyone will want to read. It is definitely for mature audiences.