The Dark Queens: The Bloody Rivalry That Forged the Medieval World by Shelley Puhak

Information

Goodreads: The Dark Queens
Series: None
Age Category: Adult
Source: Library
Published: 2022

Official Summary

The remarkable, little-known story of two trailblazing women in the Early Middle Ages who wielded immense power, only to be vilified for daring to rule.

Brunhild was a Spanish princess, raised to be married off for the sake of alliance-building. Her sister-in-law Fredegund started out as a lowly palace slave. And yet—in the 6th-century Merovingian Empire, where women were excluded from noble succession and royal politics was a blood sport—these two iron-willed strategists reigned over vast realms for decades, changing the face of Europe.

The two queens commanded armies and negotiated with kings and popes. They formed coalitions and broke them, mothered children and lost them. They fought a years-long civil war—against each other. With ingenuity and skill, they battled to stay alive in the game of statecraft, and in the process laid the foundations of what would one day be Charlemagne’s empire. Yet after Brunhild and Fredegund’s deaths—one gentle, the other horrific—their stories were rewritten, their names consigned to slander and legend.

In The Dark Queens, award-winning writer Shelley Puhak sets the record straight. She resurrects two very real women in all their complexity, painting a richly detailed portrait of an unfamiliar time and striking at the roots of some of our culture’s stubbornest myths about female power. The Dark Queens offers proof that the relationships between women can transform the world.

Review

Shelley Puhak’s The Dark Queens is one of the most riveting books I have read this year–and one of the most fascinating nonfiction books I have ever read. This narrative nonfiction delves deep into history to recover the stories of female power and leadership that later generations wished to erase. The result is a story so wild, it rivals fiction in its sheer scope of intrigue, wickedness, and just plain weirdness. A recommended read to all who enjoy medieval history or even fiction set in medieval-esque worlds.

One of the key traits that I associate with great nonfiction is readability. It is a talent to be able to draw in a non-specialized audience to a work one is intimately familiar with. Puhak does this seemingly effortlessly, weaving her research into a tapestry so rich and varied it feels like settling down to hear a story from a bard. It possibly helps that Puhak has written a narrative nonfiction, a work rooted in research and real events, but one that sometimes has to fill in the gaps a bit with phrases such as, “Perhaps she felt,” or, “She may have then.” That is, we do not always know exactly what happened or why, but Puhak can make reasonable guesses based on the evidence.

The story itself verges on the fantastic, with Queens Brunhild and Fredegund matching wits in a decades-long struggle for political supremacy. They are surrounded by a rich cast of characters–loyal friends, treacherous villains, smug priests and politicians–who help keep the tale lively and, again, very, very weird. My favorite interlude was the nuns’ revolt, where a group of the sisters essentially barricaded themselves in to endure a siege because they were unsatisfied with the conditions at their convent. This is the kind of history I want more of! Just as Briana noted in her review of The Dark Queens, I found myself gasping aloud.

The Dark Queens is a highly accessible, highly entertaining introduction to an overlooked period of medieval history, as well as an incisive look at whose stories get told and why. I highly recommend it to one and all–not just nonfiction readers!

Dante: A Life by Alessandro Barbero, Trans. by Allan Cameron

Information

Goodreads: Dante: A Life
Series: None
Age Category: Adult
Source: Library
Published: 2020

Official Summary

Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy has defined how people imagine and depict heaven and hell for over seven centuries.

However, outside of Italy, his other works are not well known, and less still is generally known about the context he wrote them in. In Dante, Barbero brings the legendary author’s Italy to life, describing the political intrigue, battles, city and society that shaped his life and work. The son of a shylock who dreams of belonging to the world of writers and nobles, we follow Dante into the dark corridors of politics where ideals are shattered by rampant corruption, and then into exile as he travels Italy and discovers the extraordinary color and variety of the countryside, the metropolises, and the knightly courts. 

This is a book by a serious scholar with real popular appeal, as evidenced by its bestseller ranking in Italy. It is a remarkable piece of forensic investigation into medieval Italian life.

Review

Dante: A Life by Alessandro Barbero delves deep into the historical annals to uncover what we really know about Dante Alighieri. While some biographical accounts assume certain facts about Dante’s life, Barbero’s account explains precisely what we know with certainty, what scholars disagree on, and what conclusions we can draw from various other known facets of medieval life. This biography is one for the Dante enthusiast, the one for whom no detail is too small or too dry.

While I count Dante as one of my most beloved authors, I have to admit that I struggled a bit reading Dante: A Life because of how dry–and how roundabout–it seems. This is not a straightforward account of one man’s life from birth to death, but rather a meandering biography arranged somewhat thematically. It opens with chapters discussing what we can determine about the status of Dante’s family based on such things as where and how they served in the military, when and if they received a last name, and so forth. The prose does not sparkle, however; this is no narrative nonfiction and possibly not even popular nonfiction. This is straight research, a series of facts told in a fact-like manner.

Even so, I found myself drawn into the account because of how honest it is. There are certain aspects of Dante’s life that I took for granted, because it seemed like everyone knew and accept them. Barbero, however, reveals when the historical record is shady and makes arguments that at times other scholars may have missed clues. I was fascinated, for instance, by Barbero’s argument that Dante and Gemma Donati were not engaged absurdly young, but that a record keeper may have marked an incorrect date. That…actually makes a lot more sense. Other intriguing tidbits are also scattered throughout the book.

Dante: A Life is a remarkably thorough account, one that uses the author’s apparent expertise in the minutiae of medieval life to piece together the likeliest scenarios for Dante’s biography. I do not know that it is a highly readable book–and thus perhaps not best suited for a reader just starting on their own Dantean journey. It is, however, an impressive one. I certainly closed the pages feeling that I had learned more about Dante than I had ever known I could.

The Dark Queens: The Bloody Rivalry That Forged the Medieval World by Shelley Puhak (ARC Review)

Information

Goodreads: The Dark Queens
Series: None
Age Category: Adult
Source: Netgalley
Publication Date: February 22, 2022

Official Summary

The remarkable, little-known story of two trailblazing women in the Early Middle Ages who wielded immense power, only to be vilified for daring to rule.

Brunhild was a Spanish princess, raised to be married off for the sake of alliance-building. Her sister-in-law Fredegund started out as a lowly palace slave. And yet—in the 6th-century Merovingian Empire, where women were excluded from noble succession and royal politics was a blood sport—these two iron-willed strategists reigned over vast realms for decades, changing the face of Europe.

The two queens commanded armies and negotiated with kings and popes. They formed coalitions and broke them, mothered children and lost them. They fought a years-long civil war—against each other. With ingenuity and skill, they battled to stay alive in the game of statecraft, and in the process laid the foundations of what would one day be Charlemagne’s empire. Yet after Brunhild and Fredegund’s deaths—one gentle, the other horrific—their stories were rewritten, their names consigned to slander and legend.

In The Dark Queens, award-winning writer Shelley Puhak sets the record straight. She resurrects two very real women in all their complexity, painting a richly detailed portrait of an unfamiliar time and striking at the roots of some of our culture’s stubbornest myths about female power. The Dark Queens offers proof that the relationships between women can transform the world.

Review

The Dark Queens is an utterly immersive work of narrative nonfiction that had wide-eyed and gasping more than any fiction book I’ve read in the past several months. Though the book is focused on Queens Brunhild and Fredegund, the cast of characters is massive, and the complexity and wildness of their political, personal, and military maneuvers is truly something to behold. I couldn’t get enough of this story, and I hope it makes the “Dark Ages” more accessible and interesting to other readers.

Puhak’s work is clearly rooted in an enormous amount of research. There are footnotes (though not so many they interrupt the flow of the story) and direct quotes from sources like Gregory of Tours where applicable. (Unfortunately, very little survives of Brunhild’s or Fredegund’s own words.) There are moments where Puhak is obviously conjecturing, about what Brunhild or Fredegund was probably feelig at some point or about what the city would have looked like from their bedroom windows, etc., but this, too, is clearly grounded in some sort of research (ex. what did this city look and sound like in general at this time period, to their best of our knowledge?), and a careful reader will be able to mentally note the pieces where Puhak seems to be filling in the gaps a bit. Her educated guesses do make the book read more smoothly (again, it’s narrative nonfiction), which I think readers will generally appreciate and find keeps the book engaging.

And engaging it is. I can hardly remember the last time I read a nonfiction book this quickly and with an urgent sense to find out what on earth was going to happen next– because what happened next was always absolutely crazy. Brunhild comes across as brilliant and calculating but one of the more level-headed actors in the story, while Fredegund is fierce about getting rivals out of her ways and cool with being accused of a wide number of murders. The men go about marrying and divorcing and killing and invading everyone left and right, betraying each other and making up and acting like this is all totally normal. What a time to be alive, either as someone in power who had to participate in all this scheming or as a poor peasant who had to wonder month to month exactly what kingdom they belonged to now.

One of the author’s goals is to revive the history specifically of Brunhild and Fredegund, two powerful women who ruled something amounting to an empire, whose contributions to society would be systematically erased by their successors. And the book does do that. I do think, in spite of Puhak’s efforts, that Brunhild comes across as more “sympathetic” than Fredegund, who murdered tons of people and was even violent with her own daughter, but Fredegund is clearly brilliant at playing politics and a force to be reckoned with, and I can see the arguments that people were/are to be less likely to bat an eye at man who’s as violent at she is. I, however, do think the book expands a lot beyond the two women; it’s an excellent portrayal of the region as a whole during this time period, with a large network of actors striving to take land and power.

You don’t need to be a nonfiction fan to enjoy this one. The strong narrative voice and the wild action of the story will keep you engaged even if you’re normally just a fiction reader. I don’t know if a fantasy author could have made stuff up that’s this fast-paced and, at times, downright bizarre. Seriously, go pick this one up when it’s released February 2022.

The Gilded Page: The Secret Lives of Medieval Manuscripts by Mary Wellesley

Information

Goodreads: The Gilded Page
Series: None
Age Category: Adult
Source: Library
Published: 2021

Official Summary

Medieval manuscripts can tell us much about power and art, knowledge and beauty. Many have survived because of an author’s status—part of the reason we have so much of Chaucer’s writing, for example, is because he was a London-based government official first and a poet second. Other works by the less influential have narrowly avoided ruin, like the book of illiterate Margery Kempe, found in a country house closet, the cover nibbled on by mice. Scholar Mary Wellesley recounts the amazing origins of these remarkable manuscripts, surfacing the important roles played by women and ordinary people—the grinders, binders, and scribes—in their creation and survival.  

The Gilded Page is the story of the written word in the manuscript age. Rich and surprising, The Gilded Page shows how the most exquisite objects ever made by human hands came from unexpected places.

Review

The Gilded Page is a loosely organized love letter to the medieval manuscript, covering topics ranging from the physical production of parchment to patrons of manuscripts to the scribes who wrote them. Along the way, Mary Wellesley dives into the biographies of various authors, artists, scribes, and patrons, and touches on aspects of medieval life, such as what being an anchoress entailed. While the book can often feel rather random, it does provide many fascinating insights into manuscripts, their reception, and their changing place in history–a rare treat for those interested in the medieval time period.

Because the organization feels so random, readers will likely find themselves pulled more strongly to different parts of the text. For me, reading about some of the women involved in patronizing and even producing manuscripts proved fascinating–I had no idea that women acted as scribes! I also enjoyed learning more about female authors who have been overlooked throughout history, and ended up putting a library hold on a book with poems by the (sometimes bawdy) Welsh poet Gwerful Mechain.

Also fascinating is the concept of the manuscript as an artifact worthy of study in its own right. Wellesley notes that historians and literary critics have often prioritized the vision of the author, and so they spend much time trying to uncover the “original form” of the text. Scribes, however, played a role in shaping texts, adding, excising, and rearranging; their decisions give us insight into how a text might have been understood during a particular time.

On the whole, I enjoyed journeying with Wellesley through the beautiful, weird, and fragile history of the manuscript. One of the great tragedies of history is that so many manuscripts have been lost, due to time, negligence, war, fire, and religious zeal. Some of the most famous texts we have now only barely survived, leading one to wonder just how many other wonderful texts have disappeared forever. The Gilded Page is just a glimpse of the thoughts, dreams, hopes, and fears that the makers of manuscripts left behind.

Beowulf: A New Translation by Maria Dahvana Headley

Information

Goodreads: Beowulf: A New Translation
Series: None
Source: Library
Published: August 25, 2020

Official Summary

A new, feminist translation of Beowulf by the author of The Mere Wife.

Nearly twenty years after Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf — and fifty years after the translation that continues to torment high-school students around the world — there is a radical new verse translation of the epic poem by Maria Dahvana Headley, which brings to light elements never before translated into English.

A man seeks to prove himself as a hero. A monster seeks silence in his territory. A warrior seeks to avenge her murdered son. A dragon ends it all. These familiar components of the epic poem are seen with a novelist’s eye toward gender, genre, and history. Beowulf has always been a tale of entitlement and encroachment — of powerful men seeking to become more powerful and one woman seeking justice for her child — but this version brings new context to an old story. While crafting her contemporary adaptation, Headley unearthed significant shifts lost over centuries of translation; her Beowulf is one for the twenty-first century.

Review

This is a difficult review for me to write because, on one hand, I understand what Maria Dahvana Headley is doing with this translation. She’s making Beowulf more modern and accessible, and she’s using her translation to draw out a new interpretation of the story, one where Grendel’s mother is a grief-stricken mom before than a monster and where Beowulf and company are still impressive warriors but also kind of bragging dude bros who don’t know everything. I see her vision, and I get where she’s coming from. On the other hand: it just isn’t my thing.

I’ve read a number of translations of Beowulf (such as Heaney’s and Tolkien’s), and I’ve written a post for the blog about whether the story is one of adventure or one of loss. I LIKE the old feel of the story and I like the translator interpretation that Beowulf used antiquated language when it was written; it sounded old to its first Anglo-Saxon listeners. I like feeling that I’m in a far-off time and place where the things that mattered to people are sometimes strikingly familiar and sometimes completely foreign. I’m not really into a version of Beowulf where Beowulf calls everyone, including kings, “bro” and the narrator calls Beowulf Hrothgar’s “new best boy.”

I also didn’t think the combo old/new language meshed. Maria Dahvana Headley talks in the introduction about how she wants the story to be approachable and how she wants it to sound like someone telling a story, like something someone would say. Except, well, none of it sounds like something anyone would say. I cannot imagine someone standing somewhere and saying these lines:

I’ve racked my brain, bro, but, Unferth,
I can’t unpack any similar stories of
heroics from you. Let me say it straight:
You don’t rate and neither did Breca
when it came to battle. The gulf? You’re cattle,
and I’m a wolf . . . (581-586)

There’s something about the way that the translation sometimes uses the Anglo-Saxon language (ex. kennings like “whale-road”) and sometimes uses modern language (ex. “daddy” or “bullshit”) and fits into some poetic meter that isn’t quite Anglo-Saxon but clearly based around it that all comes across as awkward to me. And who would really brag to someone by saying, “The gulf?” and then calling the other person cattle? I get that all this is actually the appeal of this translation to many people, but I didn’t like it.

The one part I did like is that Grendel’s mother truly gets a better light here. She’s still metaphorically a monster and she still has to die, but Headley translates her as just a woman who is (reasonably) upset her son has been killed. Headley makes the point that the Old English wording doesn’t mean she actually has to be labelled a hag or monster or swamp thing or whatever else translators have come up with. She can just be a woman who lives in the mere, who has an impressive hoard of weapons and a lot of strength.

So, if you like Beowulf, this is definitely worth looking into just as a new perspective on the story. If you don’t like Beowulf or you’ve always been intimidated by old-timey language translations, this could also be of interest to you. Again, it’s just not for me. I’m glad I read it once, but I don’t think I’ll be rereading it for any reason.

5 Classics from the Middle Ages I Recommend (Classic Remarks)

WHAT IS CLASSIC REMARKS?

Classic Remarks is a meme hosted here at Pages Unbound that poses questions each Friday about classic literature and asks participants to engage in ongoing discussions surrounding not only themes in the novels but also questions about canon formation, the “timelessness” of literature, and modes of interpretation.

HOW CAN I PARTICIPATE?

Leave your link to your post on your own blog in the comments below. And feel free to comment with your thoughts even if you are not officially participating with a full post!

You can find more information and the list of weekly prompts here.

(Readers who like past prompts but missed them have also answered them on their blog later and linked back to us at Pages Unbound, so feel free to do that, too!)

THIS WEEK’S PROMPT:

Recommend a classic from the Middle Ages.

The Obvious

Let’s get the obvious out of the way. If you know very little about medieval literature, you’re probably familiar with The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, King Arthur, and Robin Hood. All of these I do, in fact, recommend, although I admit it took me a while personally to warm up to The Canterbury Tales and appreciate them, and I literally studied medieval literature in grad school. So they’re worth reading, but you don’t have to start there, and I wouldn’t sweat it if they’re not your thing. Also, there is the small problem that there isn’t really an original/definitive King Arthur OR Robin Hood tale. There are just a lot of stories from different authors and years during the Middle Ages, so if you’re interested in these things, you have a lot to choose from. Have at it. (The more obscure the stories are, however, the less likely there will be a modern English translation of it.)

For King Arthur (and his knights) stories, check out:

• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
• “Yvain, or The Knight with the Lion” by Chrétien de Troyes (or the YA graphic novel!)
• The History of the Kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth
• The Alliterative Morte Arthure
• The Stanzaic Morte Arthure

For Robin Hood stories, check out:

• Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales
• “A Gest of Robyn Hode”

• 

• 

• 

The Less Obvious

Silence

Silence is the story of a girl who is secretly raised as a boy because the king has decreed that women can no longer inherit, and her parents want her to have their estate after they die.  Silence wrestles with her identity throughout the story, knowing she has the body of a woman but recognizing that she acts like a man and enjoys playing a male role in society.  Nature and Nurture get into some heated arguments over what makes someone’s gender.

Read my full post: 5 Reasons to Read the French Romance Silence.

The Lais of Marie de France by Marie de France

A collection of twelve short stories recorded by Marie de France and translated into prose.  The stories are classic lais Marie heard told during her lifetime, often featuring brave knights, lovely ladies, and a bit of magic.

Read my full review here.

The Song of Roland

An 11th century epic poem that takes place during the reign of Charlemagne. It tells the story of Roland, who is guarding Charlemagne’s rear as the army departs Spain, how his stepfather betrays Charlemagne and the Franks, and how he pridefully refuses to call for aid as he and his party become overwhelmed by enemy forces.

Troilus and Criseyde by Geoffrey Chaucer

A classic love story that has been told and retold (Shakespeare wrote a play, too), featuring star-crossed lovers during the Siege of Troy. If you thought Chaucer only wrote The Canterbury Tales, you’ll be pleased and surprised by the nuance with which he tells the story of Troilus and Cressida and how they fall in love and experience tragedy.

Amis and Amiloun

In this medieval romance, two knights (unrelated but very similar in appearance) swear a troth plight to be true to each other in wrong or right. The ethicalness of this oath comes into question when Amiloun agrees to fight as Amis in a trial by combat—where Amis is clearly in the wrong and deserves to lose. As a result of his decision, Amiloun is struck with leprosy, but is this a punishment from God or simply a trial he is willing to endure for his love of Amis? And is there anything Amis can do to repay him?

Read my full review of “Amis and Amiloun”.

Read the full text of “Amis and Amiloun” online (in Middle English).

Marriage and the Family in the Middle Ages by Frances Gies and Joseph Gies

Information

Goodreads: Marriage and the Family in the Middle Ages
Series: None
Source: Purchased
Published: 1989

Official Summary

Throughout history, the significance of the family—the basic social unit—has been vital. In Marriage and the Family in the Middle Ages, acclaimed historians Frances and Joseph Gies trace the development of marriage and the family from the medieval era to early modern times. It describes how the Roman and barbarian cultural streams merged under the influence of the Christian church to forge new concepts, customs, laws, and practices. Century by century, the Gies follow the development—sometimes gradual, at other times revolutionary—of significant components in the history of the family including:

• The basic functions of the family as a production unit, as well as its religious, social, judicial, and educational roles.
• The shift of marriage from private arrangement between families to public ceremony between individuals, and the adjustments in dowry, bride-price, and counter-dowry.
• The development of consanguinity rules and incest taboos in church law and lay custom.
• The peasant family in its varying condition of being free or unfree, poor, middling, or rich.
• The aristocratic estate, the problem of the younger son, and the disinheritance of daughters.
• The Black Death and its long-term effects on the family.
• Sex attitudes and customs: the effects of variations in age of men and women at marriage.
• The changing physical environment of noble, peasant, and urban families.
• Arrangements by families for old age and retirement.

Expertly researched, master historians Frances and Joseph Gies—whose books were used by George R.R. Martin in his research for Game of Thrones—paint a compelling, detailed portrait of family life and social customs in one of the most riveting eras in history.

Review

Although I studied medieval literature in grad school, I always felt a bit shaky on some aspects of actual medieval history since I tended to gather that type of information less directly (i.e. reading articles about medieval literature that referenced historical matters rather than reading sources actually about history). Marriage and the Family Life is an engaging and approachable overview of life in the Middle Ages, covering the full time period and geographic areas in England and on the Continent, including France, Spain, Italy, etc. I wish I’d read this earlier to get a digestible sense of how customs and philosophies about marriage, inheritance, family living situations, children, and more were approached during these 1000 years.

I don’t think one actually has to have an academic interest in the Middle Ages to find this book interesting. The book jacket makes much use of the fact that George R. R. Martin has said he’s read the authors’ works to aid in his writing, and I do think the book is very readable and would make sense to anyone who would like to learn more about the topic.

The authors do open with a literature review of various other books/articles that had previously covered these topics, but one can safely skip that if they have no use for it and get on to actually reading about the marriage and the family. In the main body of the text, little stories and examples are scattered throughout to liven up the information.

The book goes in chronological order, and it gives a great sense of how things changed over time. (Interestingly, women had fewer rights in terms of divorce and inheritance in the Late Middle Ages than they did in the Early Middle Ages! So much for progress, I guess.) So readers can get a sense of things like how the Church or the Black Plague influenced marriage and the family, as well.

The one “failing” is that the book IS an overview, so often it would mention something I found interesting and wanted to know more about but move on without fully elaborating. Obviously, I can look up more on my own, of course.

If you’re interested in the Middle Ages, I would highly recommend this. I hope to check out the authors’ other books on life in the medieval village and life in the medieval city sometime for some more overviews.

The Romance of Tristan by Béroul

Information

Goodreads: The Romance of Tristan
Series: None
Source: Purchased
Published: 1170

Summary (Penguin Classics)

This edition contains perhaps the earliest and most elemental version of the tragic legend of Tristan and Yseult in a distinguished prose translation. Alan S. Fredrick summarizes missing episodes and includes a translation of ‘The Tale of Tristan’s Madness.’

One of the earliest extant versions of the Tristan and Yseut story, Beroul’s French manuscript of The Romance of Tristan dates back to the middle of the twelfth century. It recounts the legend of Tristan, nephew of King Mark of Cornwall, and the king’s Irish wife Yseut, who fall passionately in love after mistakenly drinking a potion. Their illicit romance remains secret for many years, but the relentless suspicion of the king’s barons and the fading effects of the magic draught eventually lead to tragedy for the lovers. While Beroul’s work emphasizes the impulsive and often brutal behaviour of the characters, its sympathetic depiction of two people struggling against their destiny is one of the most powerful versions of this enduringly popular legend. 

Review

Béroul’s The Romance of Tristan is the earliest version we have of the Tristan and Yseult legend, often regarded as one of the world’s great love stories. Béroul’s version, however, entertained me with the wild antics of the characters and the story’s strange insistence that the two lovers were, in fact, worth rooting for in spite of their adultery.

Of course, the point of the story is that the two are forbidden lovers committing adultery in every version, but Béroul’s version goes through some interesting mental gymnastics to make this seem “acceptable.” For instance, the pair fall in love accidentally because of a love potion, so it’s “not really their fault,” and the story often suggests that God is on their side while anyone who opposes them and tries to expose their affair to the king is “evil.” For me, a lot of this raises the question of whether the story is really “romantic.” Do they really love each other if it’s because of a potion? I’d say no, but they seem to have feelings for each other even when the potion eventually wears off. And what does it mean for them to be the “good guys” of the story whom God apparently does not wish to punish?

There’s a lot to ponder in the story, but the text itself doesn’t always offer answers, in part because it’s frequently inconsistent. There are many examples of medieval texts where I would personally argue that “inconsistencies” and things that “don’t make sense” to modern audiences actually made sense to a medieval audience who might have approached things like the structure of a story differently. Here, however…the text really is at fault. A character who is killed off is later alive later in the story! So Béroul might not have gotten all his details tightly knit here.

I think the inconsistencies are entertaining, however, along with the general antics of the characters. There’s a whole scene of nobles falling in mud! Sadly, this text is only a fragment, and some interesting scenes can only be summarized by the editor to fill in the gaps, but I enjoyed what was there.

If you like medieval literature, classics, or just wild stories, this is for you.

The Guinevere Deception by Kiersten White

Information

Goodreads: The Guinevere Deception
Series: Camelot Rising #1
Source: Library
Published: November 5, 2019

Official Summary

There was nothing in the world as magical and terrifying as a girl.

Princess Guinevere has come to Camelot to wed a stranger: the charismatic King Arthur. With magic clawing at the kingdom’s borders, the great wizard Merlin conjured a solution–send in Guinevere to be Arthur’s wife . . . and his protector from those who want to see the young king’s idyllic city fail. The catch? Guinevere’s real name–and her true identity–is a secret. She is a changeling, a girl who has given up everything to protect Camelot.

To keep Arthur safe, Guinevere must navigate a court in which the old–including Arthur’s own family–demand things continue as they have been, and the new–those drawn by the dream of Camelot–fight for a better way to live. And always, in the green hearts of forests and the black depths of lakes, magic lies in wait to reclaim the land. Arthur’s knights believe they are strong enough to face any threat, but Guinevere knows it will take more than swords to keep Camelot free.

Deadly jousts, duplicitous knights, and forbidden romances are nothing compared to the greatest threat of all: the girl with the long black hair, riding on horseback through the dark woods toward Arthur. Because when your whole existence is a lie, how can you trust even yourself?

Review

The Guinevere Deception is an imaginative retelling that weaves together pieces of Arthurian legend (itself often wildly but beautifully inconsistent) to create a story about a girl who needs to find herself while protecting her new home of Camelot.  While overall I think the story is strong and well-crafted and will be satisfying to a large number of readers, personally I was not always gripped and would have liked a bit more development of the plot.

Though there are a few aspects of the book I believe were intended to be plot twists, most of it was predictable—starting with the opening of the book where there is some “secret” the protagonist holds…which in this case is mentioned on the book jacket summary.  There is also a mysterious Guinevere herself must solve, and it’s also laughable how obvious it is she is following the wrong threads and clues.  I’m not generally one to read mainly for suspense or surprise, but it was a bit wearying to feel the character was wasting her time—and to feel I was, as well, as I had to plod through the requisite pages until she finally discovered how wrong she was and started doing something more useful.  Interestingly, the elements from Arthurian legend incorporated into the plot did not feel as blandly predictable, even though I was aware where certain scenes must be heading.

Guinevere as a character is interesting, however, and it was fun to read about her.  She is someone who is not necessarily drawn in detail in a lot of Arthurian source material, which can give writers some room to play.  White has a created a character who is both powerful and vulnerable, smart but often in the dark, important but clearly still very young.  Sometimes in YA, while the characters are doing great deeds, it’s hard to remember they’re teens; I generally remembered that Guinevere was, even as she was impressing me with her talents.

I also enjoyed the characterization of most of the other players in the novel and had fun picking out where White was inspired by her sources.  In addition to the obvious characters like Mordred and Merlin, White adds ones like Tristan and Isolde and Percival and Blancheflour, who might be less familiar to some readers.  Personally, I’ve always been interested in Gawain, so it would have been fun to see him get a larger role, as well, but that’s not actually a flaw of the book.

The main premise of the new vs. the old, magic vs. order, nature vs. peace, etc. is also interesting and nuanced, and I think there’s a lot of room for this to grow in the following books.  In some sense, The Guinevere Deception has the tiniest feel of The Lord of the Rings, as characters ponder whether it’s time for dangerous magic to leave and for a world ordered by men to take over.  There’s also general medieval influence here, of course, in the sense that magic and folklore beliefs coexisted with Christianity, sometimes openly and sometimes secretly, for quite a while in the Middle Ages.

The Guinevere Deception is a strong fantasy with strong female characters that will likely please many readers. I enjoyed it myself; I just wasn’t gripped enough to want to continue reading the series.

Yvain: The Knight of the Lion adapted by M. T. Anderson and Andrea Offermann

Information

Goodreads: Yvain: The Knight of the Lion
Series: None
Source: City Book Review
Published: March 14, 2017

Official Summary

Eager for glory and heedless of others, Sir Yvain sets out from King Arthur’s court and defeats a local lord in battle, unknowingly intertwining his future with the lives of two compelling women: Lady Laudine, the beautiful widow of the fallen lord, and her sly maid Lunette. In a stunning visual interpretation of a 12th century epic poem by Chrétien de Troyes, readers are — at first glance — transported into a classic Arthurian romance complete with errant knights, plundering giants, and fire-breathing dragons. A closer look, however, reveals a world rich with unspoken emotion. Striking, evocative art by Andrea Offermann sheds light upon the inner lives of medieval women and the consequences Yvain’s oblivious actions have upon Laudine and Lunette. Renowned author M. T. Anderson embraces a new form with a sophisticated graphic novel that challenges Yvain’s role as hero, delves into the honesty and anguish of love, and asks just how fundamentally the true self can really change.

Review

As a fan of medieval literature, I was excited to see Anderson adapt this story about one of King Arthur’s knights by Chrétien de Troyes for a new audience.  Although I enjoyed Anderson’s take in general, he does make changes to the plot and characters (presumably to streamline the story) that fundamentally change some of the themes explored in the original French medieval romance.  This, I think, does a disservice to Chrétien’s text, which is undoubtedly entertaining but is about so much more than epic battles and encounters with monsters.  Chrétien’s stories tend toward the complex and thought-provoking, and Anderson’s changes do away with some of this in order to present a slightly more digestible tale.

The story that Anderson and Offermann present is one of courage, love, and loyalty lost and regained. Yvain is not always heroic and the outcomes of the adventures are not always happy, but this is the point, and it paints a more complicated version of King Arthur’s times and his knights than readers get from other sources.  (Indeed, there are a lot of medieval texts that paint Arthur or his knights in a less than flattering light, which I think many modern readers are unaware of.) The female characters in particular in this story seem stuck between having power and being unable to wield it to get what they want.  It is a story that asks readers to question social and gender roles, as well as the definition of real power.

Offerman’s illustrations are gorgeous, if a bit lacking in color for my personal taste, and they are often the backbone of the story when Anderson chooses not to use words to explain plot events from his source material. Her art is detailed and based in extensive research, adding a wonderful layer of nuance to the book. This adaptation will make the most sense to readers who have read Chrétien’s version (and I do recommend reading that; Penguin publishes a very accessible translation), but it is a solid introduction to the medieval romance for those who have not read the original.