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Twilight of Avalon

av Anna Elliott

Serier: Twilight of Avalon (1)

MedlemmarRecensionerPopularitetGenomsnittligt betygOmnämnanden
19915135,414 (3.76)19
A retelling of the Arthurian romance finds queen Isolde, the daughter of Mordred, grieving for her murdered husband, struggling to overcome court suspicion in order to retain her throne, and falling for a prisoner who aids the queen's effort to outmaneuver a scheming Lord Marche.
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  cherryblossommj | May 28, 2013 |
Trystan and Isolde is a part of Arthurian legend I’m not very familiar with. I’ve read a few stories over the years, short stories mostly or the characters have shown up as minor characters in other books, but I never really got into the longer stories. I’m not sure why that is but I thought I’d give these characters another chance.

Isolde is attempting to grieve for her husband Constantine, Arthur’s heir, after his untimely death but she finds it hard going. The realm is again in turmoil and lords and petty kings are once more vying for the throne. With little power and very few choices open to her, she makes the decision to marry a cruel man who takes the throne. With the knowledge that her new husband maybe selling out the realm to the invading Saxons, she takes steps to find the information to bring him down and also save herself from being convicted as a witch.

In most stories, Isolde is a healer, and she’s that once more in this book and it’s her need to help people, especially ones who are bleeding, that brings her in contact with Trystan. This is when the story diverged from one I’m familiar with but I was all right with that for the most part. When you read many Arthurian based stories, a change of pace is always welcome. But even with that change, I had trouble getting into the story. Isolde and Trystan are very hard, battered people with stories to tell but neither seems inclined to share their stories or heal mentally. I wasn’t looking for a warm and fuzzy cry fest but it also felt as though they were hiding stuff from each other which they sort of are but I won’t get into that.

This is the first book in a trilogy which is fine but the story ends so abruptly that I thought I had missed pages. Ending in the beginning of action makes sense when there’s to be a sequel but it felt wrong --- too abrupt, too soon.

Honestly though, I still might take a look at the sequels because I do want to know how this version of the tale ends. The dialogue was somewhat stumbling for me though. A lot of …she paused. Then: “… I’m hoping this writing tick passes with the following books. Overall, it was an interesting take on the tale that many know so well. ( )
  justabookreader | Oct 25, 2011 |
Summary: King Arthur has been dead for seven years, and the kingdom of Britain is still feeling the effects. His successor, King Constantine, has now also fallen in battle with the Saxons, and his wife, Isolde - granddaughter of Arthur by the treasonous pairing of Arthur's bastard son Modred with his wife Gwynefar - is in a precarious position, haunted by a past she cannot remember and only delicately balanced between the factions that threaten to tear Britain apart. She is nominally still High Queen, but none of them men's council trusts her due to her traitor father, and most fear her as a witch, due to the blood of Morgan that flows through her veins. King Marche seems primed to seize power, and he is a hard, cold, and cruel man. There is nothing that Isolde can do to prevent Marche from becoming High King... but when he claims her as his queen on threat of death, the only option left to her is to flee, along with a mysterious prisoner who seems neither Briton nor Saxon, but may hold the key to Isolde's future and freedom.

Review: I realized pretty immediately upon opening this book that it was not going to be quite what I expected. The first generations of the family tree had names that were familiar enough, but having Isolde be the daughter of Modred and Gwynefar was a version of Arthurian legend I had never heard before, and it threw me a little bit, and took me a while to establish myself in Elliott's version of Dark Age Britain. (Her version is based on an early version of the Arthur story - before Lancelot even entered the legend, and the betrayal of Modred and Gwynhefar was what brought down the kingdom - so it's not like she made it up out of whole cloth.) The legend of Tristan and Isolde sticks more closely to established legend, although it was clear from very early on that this was not going to be a version in which Mark was a sympathetic cuckold. Elliott's Marche is severely unsympathetic; I almost wish she'd given him a hint of something positive, a little glimmer of a shade of gray, instead of making him an unrelieved villain. I was also expecting a Tristan & Isolde story to have a little more romance than this one provided - there is certainly a spark between the two characters, but any actual romance is left for later in the series. However, I found that I didn't really miss the traditional romantic elements much; there was more than enough else going on to hold my interest.

I think my favorite thing about this book was how well Elliott grounded the familiar story in a plausible historical context. I could well believe that these characters existed and lived much as she writes them - Isolde's a proto-feminist but not anachronistically so, especially with the blood of Avalon in her veins. The juxtaposition of pagan and Christian traditions is usually one of the more interesting parts of Arthurian stories for me, and while that was present, I felt like it could have been played up more strongly. I also really liked the sense of things falling apart, of fading from the golden light of Arthur's Camelot into the beginning of a dark age - I've learned from Jo Graham's books that I really enjoy stories of people trying to hold together after everything they've known has fallen away.

Overall, though, while I really enjoyed the setting, the story, and the characters, there was just a little bit of a spark that was missing that kept me from totally loving it. Don't get me wrong, it's a very enjoyable read and a very interesting take on some old tales, and I'm certainly interested in reading the sequel(s), but it fell just a bit short of the mark in terms of leaping out, grabbing me, and making itself a favorite. 4 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: It's definitely worth reading for most historical fiction fans, and shouldn't be missed by readers who enjoy Arthurian legend. ( )
  fyrefly98 | Aug 4, 2010 |
I really wanted to like this book. I love Arthurian tales, adore Trystan & Isolde, and yet found myself after a few chapters unable to continue reading. The author writes beautifully but nothing about these characters grabbed me and made me want to invest myself in their journey. Went to book club expecting everyone else to say "Keep reading, it's worth it!" Not one person did. ( )
  VirginiaGill | May 11, 2010 |
I really wanted to like this book more than I did. I find I'm often disappointed when it comes to retellings of the Arthur story - maybe I should stop trying to convince myself I'll like them? Ah, well. My main fault with this book was the writing style. Perhaps it's a personal preference, but I really hated they way Elliott did her chapter breaks. Nearly every time, the beginning of a chapter had to backtrack some of the action, so I always felt like there was a chunk missing that she told us about instead of showing us. There was also no romance whatsoever. After reading the book description again after I finished, it sounds like that was the point; Elliott was just introducing Trystan and Isolde in this first book of the trilogy, and she'll get to the romance later. But that's majorly disappointing to me because I'm not sure I'll read the other two books. Overall, I just found this book rather dull, and I couldn't find myself caring much about the characters. ( )
  jenreidreads | Mar 21, 2010 |
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A retelling of the Arthurian romance finds queen Isolde, the daughter of Mordred, grieving for her murdered husband, struggling to overcome court suspicion in order to retain her throne, and falling for a prisoner who aids the queen's effort to outmaneuver a scheming Lord Marche.

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