I found this novel in a second hand book store. No recommendation from a friend, no previous knowledge, complete shot in the dark. Arthurian tales have always been a weakness of mine. There is so much there in a simple framework to work with for a writer, and so many different tales have been told based on it. At first glance this work struck me as being a new angle on the story, exploring the legend from Guinevere's point of view, and hopefully with a strong female character. I was pretty excited to read it actually.
Alice Borchardt has good prose, some excellent descriptions of places and some good characters. Unfortunately I think that Alice Borchardt tried to do to much and a lot of it either does not have enough back story or is over the top, which has the effect of not really tying the individual pieces together. For example, when she introduces Guinvere's potential father, who turns out to be a fairy who gives her magical armor embedded in her skin it was done abruptly, with no background on the fair folk, no background on who her father might have been. It did not do this to evoke mystery, it just happens like that.
Other things happen too abruptly. A prime example would be when she meets Arthur. Their meeting is far too devoid of content for the level of commitment that results from it. It just does not really follow. I thin that the real problem to me as a reader with this story is that it is far too obvious that the events that take place, and the decisions that are made, are the work of the author. At no point does it become real. At no point does it evoke a lost past, or another world that I fall into. Which is one of my goals in reading fantasy. Being a lover of fantasy literature is not being a lover necessarily of the cleverest writing or the wittiest dialogue, it is rather the desire for losing yourself, briefly, into something other.
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