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jwells's review
Add me to the list of readers who wanted to like this book. As a teenager, I was an insatiable reader of Arthurian retellings, and this one sounded original enough to get me back into them.
However, It suffers from an odd combination of traits. On one hand, there's a lot of gritty violence resulting from its inner city setting. On the other hand, it gets off to a really slow start in terms of actual plot movement. A lot of things happen, but 150 pages in, I'm still not sure what the book is about, or which character I'm supposed to bond to. I'd be more willing to sit through all the gun violence etc., if the plot was really gripping, but unfortunately it's barely there. It's pretty demanding to expect a reader to tolerate a lot of violence and at the same time a slow-moving plot. Those are typically two different kinds of books.
The original Arthurian romance was also set in a time with a lot of violence and grit. In Mallory, people are always getting chopped in half lengthwise. I stayed with the stories because of a spark of hope, idealism, and romance that they had. I need to see that in King Arthur no matter how the setting has changed.
However, It suffers from an odd combination of traits. On one hand, there's a lot of gritty violence resulting from its inner city setting. On the other hand, it gets off to a really slow start in terms of actual plot movement. A lot of things happen, but 150 pages in, I'm still not sure what the book is about, or which character I'm supposed to bond to. I'd be more willing to sit through all the gun violence etc., if the plot was really gripping, but unfortunately it's barely there. It's pretty demanding to expect a reader to tolerate a lot of violence and at the same time a slow-moving plot. Those are typically two different kinds of books.
The original Arthurian romance was also set in a time with a lot of violence and grit. In Mallory, people are always getting chopped in half lengthwise. I stayed with the stories because of a spark of hope, idealism, and romance that they had. I need to see that in King Arthur no matter how the setting has changed.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content, Gun violence, Gore, Cursing, Violence, Addiction, Animal cruelty, Blood, Drug abuse, and Death
Moderate: Infidelity, Grief, and Cursing
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