Astoundingly, a fresh take on an extremely well-trodden legend.
King Arthur is dead—what happens now?
Collum of the Out Isles has stolen armor and a horse from his local lord, hoping to be accepted as a knight of the Round Table. But when he arrives at Camelot, the place is nearly deserted; King Arthur and a majority of his knights have died in the battle at Camlann, leaving no clear heir. With the few remaining knights and the sorceress Nimue, Collum travels across the disintegrating nation and even into the fairy Otherworld, searching for a successor to the dead Arthur and marshaling forces against the rivals who seek Britain’s throne for themselves—including Morgan le Fay, Arthur’s enchantress half-sister, who claims that she is the rightful heir, but mostly acts as a chaos agent throughout, helping or harming the questers as seems best to her in the moment. As the book progresses, we learn the secret backstory of each of the surviving knights as well as the nature of the relationship between Lancelot and Guinevere, the apparent spark for the civil conflict (the truth, intriguingly, is not what you think). The story of King Arthur has been told and substantially altered many times over the centuries, and explored by a multitude of contemporary novelists, but the author of the Magicians trilogy makes room for himself here. The purposeful inclusion of anachronisms recalls T.H. White’s The Once and Future King, and the conflict between Christianity and pagan traditions is strongly reminiscent of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon. However, very few writers have explored post-Arthurian Britain or focused quite so much on developing the stories of the minor characters in the saga—the transgender man Sir Dinadan; Arthur’s bodyguard, Sir Bedivere, secretly in love with his liege; Sir Dagonet the Fool, suffering from severe bipolar disorder; Sir Palomides, a highly educated prince of Baghdad whose not-so-secret passion for the lady Isolde keeps him in a primitive land that looks down on him for the color of his skin; and so on. This is not a realistic conjecture of how Britain would continue after the death of a charismatic leader who tried to institute new policies of standard law and justice. It’s a metafiction in which the survivors of a myth attempt to extend that myth as they contend with the inner demons of their pasts.
Astoundingly, a fresh take on an extremely well-trodden legend.Pub Date: July 16, 2024
ISBN: 9780735224049
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
A pleasant if not entirely convincing tribute to the power of art.
A French art historian’s English-language fiction debut combines the story of a loving relationship between a grandfather and granddaughter with an enlightening discussion of art.
One day, when 10-year-old Mona removes the necklace given to her by her now-dead grandmother, she experiences a frightening, hour-long bout of blindness. Her parents take her to the doctor, who gives her a variety of tests and also advises that she see a psychiatrist. Her grandfather Henry tells her parents that he will take care of that assignment, but instead, he takes Mona on weekly visits to either the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, or the Centre Pompidou, where each week they study a single work of art, gazing at it deeply and then discussing its impact and history and the biography of its maker. For the reader’s benefit, Schlesser also describes each of the works in scrupulous detail. As the year goes on, Mona faces the usual challenges of elementary school life and the experiences of being an only child, and slowly begins to understand the causes of her temporary blindness. Primarily an amble through a few dozen of Schlesser’s favorite works of art—some well known and others less so, from Botticelli and da Vinci through Basquiat and Bourgeois—the novel would probably benefit from being read at a leisurely pace. While the dialogue between Henry and the preternaturally patient and precocious Mona sometimes strains credulity, readers who don’t have easy access to the museums of Paris may enjoy this vicarious trip in the company of a guide who focuses equally on that which can be seen and the context that can’t be. Come for the novel, stay for the introductory art history course.
A pleasant if not entirely convincing tribute to the power of art.Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2025
ISBN: 9798889661115
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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