Review - "Lancelot"

Lancelot
by Giles Kristian
rating: ☆☆
published: 31st May 2018
spoilers? none

Goodreads

Galley provided by publisher

If I'm entirely honest, my rating for this book went down the more I read of it. And that, I think, is less to do with the book itself and more to do with me. Because me and long books? We don't get along so well, especially if it's a slowburning long book like this one.

I'll start with the good parts of this book: the writing and (some of) the characters. The writing was so good - it was so evocative and atmospheric. My only problem with it was that it sometimes bordered on overly descriptive and therefore somewhat slow. And for a 512 page long book, I need something a bit faster. Some of the characters (and when I say some of, I mean, the male characters) were really well developed and I did like them - namely Lancelot and Arthur - so the end really hurt, even though I know Arthurian legend is tragic and I was expecting it. What let this book down, besides the slow pace of it, was the women in it.

Before I start on my issues in that respect, I know it's supposed to be period typical sexism and all, but even so, that as an excuse feels fairly cheap when it's a man writing it. The misogyny starts early on: in the first few chapters, Lancelot sees this girl, Celice, singing, to attract people to her father's stall. Now, Lancelot doesn't speak to Celice, just watches her a couple of times, but when one day he finds her being whored out by her father, it's all like she's betrayed me. Bear in mind he's not spoken to her at all, only seen her a couple of times, doesn't know her, and it's her father's fault that she's in this position. And yet, she is the one who betrayed him. Plus this whole little episode is never mentioned again after it happens - it literally has no goddamn point! So, that was the point at which my rating went from a potential four stars to three.

Secondly, there's an attempted rape scene about 45% of the way into the book, in which some sailor attempts to rape Guinevere. Because what is a book set in the 5th century without a rape scene, huh? It's pretty much absolutely necessary, right?

I have to admit, I did think about giving up, but instead I decided to keep reading. And got to the following line:

Tits you could hang your helmet and shield on.

And at that point I really did start just skimreading a lot of this book. Because not even good writing can keep my interest that well when there's all this casual misogyny, period typical or otherwise.

In addition to these small bits of misogyny, there was the rather larger issue I had with the female characters, of which there were only two who could actually be considered main characters: Nimue and Guinevere. Neither of them were particularly fleshed out - Nimue you can summarise as the mysterious and magical lady, and Guinevere as the beautiful princess who everyone loves. And that's about it. If they had their own desires and thoughts, it was not something they ever expressed (and I know, it's in Lancelot's POV so that's hard, but I have read books in first person that don't fail to make their female characters, or even just their side characters, three dimensional).

So yeah. In the end, the misogyny just got to me, and this book went from being a potential 4 star rating, to 2 stars, as you see now.