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A review by mels_reading_rook
The Guinevere Deception by Kiersten White
2.0
The Guinevere Deception is a retelling of the King Arthur legend with a twist: Queen Guinevere is not who she says she is - she is a changeling.
I was interested to see the changes such a twist would bring to the story, but unfortunately, it turned out to be very lackluster for me. The main character did not feel like she had a complete personality. The plot moved along because things happened to her or around her, not often because she went out searching for it. Every few chapters, Guinevere even appeared to have some crisis or earth-shattering realization of sorts, and it was starting to give me whiplash with how often it happened.
I also didn't feel very invested in the side characters either, as many appeared to serve a specific purpose to me and were not very compelling on their own. For example, Dindrane, an aristocrat of Camelot, became Guinevere's friend due to her sheer niceness, despite insulting her during their first meeting. And then there's Kind Arthur himself. It seemed he was only there because he had to be; he had no meaningful impact on the story - especially in a way that made him stand out as King Arthur - and he barely had any chemistry with Guinevere the few times he actually interacted with her.
Speaking of the on-page chemistry, that leads me to my final gripe of the book. While Guinevere and Arthur had no chemistry, she and Mordred definitely did. I had no problem with that, and in fact, it was probably intentional with the direction the story went in. However (I will be talking about the ending from hereon out)
A couple minor issues now: a female character that shows up later in the story did not feel natural, giving the second half of the story a "forced female representation" vibe for me. That issue was also coupled with the inclusion of a lesbian couple, which was handled partly off-screen. The plot was a bit too meandering for my taste, an extension of the problem with Guinevere not moving the story along in a meaningful way. Finally, the atmosphere gave me more of a general-fantasy feeling than an Arthurian-fantasy.
Overall, I feel that if the story wasn't restricted by being a retelling of the legend of King Arthur, it could have been so much better. Unfortunately, it seems to suffer under its premise, which I think may be the crux of many of its problems.
I was interested to see the changes such a twist would bring to the story, but unfortunately, it turned out to be very lackluster for me. The main character did not feel like she had a complete personality. The plot moved along because things happened to her or around her, not often because she went out searching for it. Every few chapters, Guinevere even appeared to have some crisis or earth-shattering realization of sorts, and it was starting to give me whiplash with how often it happened.
I also didn't feel very invested in the side characters either, as many appeared to serve a specific purpose to me and were not very compelling on their own. For example, Dindrane, an aristocrat of Camelot, became Guinevere's friend due to her sheer niceness, despite insulting her during their first meeting. And then there's Kind Arthur himself. It seemed he was only there because he had to be; he had no meaningful impact on the story - especially in a way that made him stand out as King Arthur - and he barely had any chemistry with Guinevere the few times he actually interacted with her.
Speaking of the on-page chemistry, that leads me to my final gripe of the book. While Guinevere and Arthur had no chemistry, she and Mordred definitely did. I had no problem with that, and in fact, it was probably intentional with the direction the story went in. However (I will be talking about the ending from hereon out)
Spoiler
the payoff for the tension between them fell flat on its face. When faced with the decision of going with Mordred (who pays attention to her and accepts her as she is) or King Arthur (who did a handful of nice things for her but otherwise seemingly brushed her away) she decides on the person who didn't really do anything for her.A couple minor issues now: a female character that shows up later in the story did not feel natural, giving the second half of the story a "forced female representation" vibe for me. That issue was also coupled with the inclusion of a lesbian couple, which was handled partly off-screen. The plot was a bit too meandering for my taste, an extension of the problem with Guinevere not moving the story along in a meaningful way. Finally, the atmosphere gave me more of a general-fantasy feeling than an Arthurian-fantasy.
Overall, I feel that if the story wasn't restricted by being a retelling of the legend of King Arthur, it could have been so much better. Unfortunately, it seems to suffer under its premise, which I think may be the crux of many of its problems.