A Tale from Camelot
by Nancy Springer
ages: 12+
First sentence: “Seated at the high table, with the emerald necklace her husband had given her resting on her half-naked bosom, the emerald tiara nestled in her dark hair, Lady Igraine tried not to answer the leer of the king.”

As many of you know, I love my King Arthur books. I love the different aspects of the myth that each individual author brings to the collective whole. I love the familiarity of the story; I know which elements are essential, which elements are trivial, and I delight in knowing how it’s all going to play out.

But, I’m wondering if I’m getting a bit burned out – even though I really don’t read more than one or two a year — because I was highly bored with this one.

Sure, it takes the myth from Morgan’s point of view; telling her story, about how she became Morgan le Fey. Aspects of the tale were woven in and through the story — Merlin, Uther and Igraine were there — but it was Morgan’s tale of how she longed for love, and yet was unwilling to accept it as its own thing when it finally came in her life. It was a choppy story, bouncing through time and place, never really settling down into something one could sink their teeth into. I’m generally not one for wordiness, but this one felt too much the other way: too pared down, not enough meat for the story to hang on. Everything felt like a caricature; as if Springer expected us to know who all these people were, and that we would fill in the blanks for her.

Perhaps this is a corollary to it being pared down, but it also felt rushed. I wanted more of Morgan’s life. We got her childhood through her time at Avalon — which really wasn’t the Avalon of my mind. Not that that’s a bad thing. — and her coming into power. But, I wanted it to go beyond, to see how it all would play out in Springer’s imagination.

Disappointing.

On the upside, though, it made me want to reread Mists of Avalon.