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GUENEVERE I The story of King Arthur is as stretchy as taffy: different people twist and pull it any way they choose to make it the way they want it. We have had Bernard Cornwell's gritty Dark Ages, the mediaeval dream world of Mallory, Vera Chapman and the TV miniseries Merlin and the New Age vision of paganism giving way to Christianity of Marion Zimmer Bradley. Rosalind Miles has put all these ingredients into a cauldron and stirred them around to create her Guenevere trilogy. It's all here but somehow she has failed to bring anything fresh and new to the old story. It falls midway between courtly and gritty, the costumes and most of the sets are Mallory but with more than a touch of Mary Stewart. We have a villainous Merlin for a change and a rather weak and indecisive Arthur and Guenevere who somehow fail to charm. I read anything I can get hold of pertaining to "The Matter of Britain" but this left me cold. In mixing around everybody else's work Miles has forgotten to add plenty of her own ideas too and somehow the characters remain two-dimensional and the whole work falls rather flat. I'll have to see if it redeems itself in the second part. |