Le Morte d 'Avalon by J. Robert King

From Barnes & Noble

The Barnes & Noble Review
J. Robert King -- best known for his numerous game-related works in series like Forgotten Realms, Magic: the Gathering, Ravenloft, and Planescape -- wraps up his Arthurian triptych with Le Morte d'Avalon, a retelling of the Camelot mythos from the point of view of Morgan le Fey, Arthur's half sister.

While Mad Merlin was told from the sorcerer's viewpoint and Lancelot du Lethe from the perspective of the greatest knight in Arthur's court, King's newest novel focuses on Morgan le Fey, the antithesis of Arthur. Morgan's mission in life is made clear at a very early age. Her mother, Igraine, is seduced by someone posing as her father; then hours later, her father is killed in battle. Her mother quickly remarries and relocates from Tintagel to London, in effect abandoning her young daughter. With deep issues concerning a male-dominated society and her half brother and his war-hungry Christian god, Morgan learns magic from the "ghost village" of wise women inside her head and sets out to defeat Arthur and liberate the women of Britannia forever.

Fans of Celtic fantasy novels with strong female characterization like Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon and Cecilia Dart-Thornton's Bitterbynde trilogy (The Ill-Made Mute, The Lady of the Sorrows, and The Battle of Evernight) will definitely be enthralled by Le Morte d'Avalon. And while there have been innumerable run-of-the-mill Arthurian legend novels published in the last decade, King manages to put a unique spin on Camelot and its legendary inhabitants. Paul Goat Allen

From the Publisher

Mad Merlin told the story from a god's point of view.

Lancelot Du Lether told the story from a lover's point of view.

Now in the third volume of J. Robert King's critically acclaimed Arthurian triptych focuses on a woman of Avalon--Morgan le Fey.

Part female Hamlet, part mystical Lady Macbeth, this daughter of a slain king must become an Arthurian Joan of Arc for all women when her position in society and royal lineage place her in direct opposition to all that Arthur must accomplish ... not just for Camelot but for all mankind.

Publishers Weekly

The strong conclusion to King's fantasy trilogy recasting Arthurian myth (after Mad Merlin and Lancelot Du Lethe) tells the story of Morgan le Fey, Arthur's half-sister, onetime lover and sworn enemy. As a six-year-old, Morgan watched as her father prepared to fight Uther, the man who would slay him, marry her mother and provide her with her half-brother Arthur. And she had the vision that would motivate her every action from that day forward: Arthur as the antlered boy, the son of war, whom she must oppose if Britannia is ever to know peace. More than anything else-the deft writing, the astounding battles or the intellectual thrill of relating King's unique slant on Arthurian legend to other writers' versions-it is that vision that makes this novel special. Morgan becomes and remains a sympathetic figure, no matter how atrocious her actions. Whatever damage she wreaks in the battle for Camelot, there remains in her something of the precious and precocious young girl who had an ecstatic vision of a beauty so great, and a future so dire, that she must do whatever was in her power to midwife the one while preventing the other. (Sept. 10) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

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