A To Z Blogging Challenge 2023: Folktales and Myths In Fiction - A Is For Arthurian Novels

 There is so much Arthurian fiction around, and besides, I did an entire A to Z on the subject, so I will just talk about a few Arthurian tales I have read and enjoyed. Some, alas, may be out of print, but it may be worth checking them up on ABEBooks, which has an impressive array of second hand books.

Let’s start with Peter David’s Knight Life. You may be familiar with his major work in comics, but he has done fiction as well. In this novel, King Arthur returns, but arrives in New York instead of Britain. He knows he isn’t going to get back his throne, so instead he decides he will eventually run for US President but starts with campaigning for mayor of New York. Merlin, who has escaped from his cave because he is living backwards and is now physically a child, helps him out by faking his records. Arthur collects his sword from the lake in Central Park and finds his reborn knights to help in his campaign. Available on Amazon. There is a sequel, which I borrowed from my local library, but I think this one is much better than the sequel.

The Stolen Lake, a children’s novel by  Joan Aiken, is set in her alternative universe in which the Stuarts still rule Britain in the 19th century. The heroine of this series is a girl called Dido Twite. In this novel she is on a ship headed for a fictional British colony in South America. It is ruled by Queen Guinevere, who is still around after centuries, waiting for Arthur to be reborn. She took with her the lake into which Arthur threw his sword, by freezing it. Guinevere is the villain in this story. I won’t give spoilers in case you want to read it, but it is great fun and easily available online, in both ebook and print. Amazon has both, but you can also buy it in Apple Books.

There are, of course, the wonderful Rosemary Sutcliff books, which are set in post-Roman Britain - The Lantern Bearers and Sword At Sunset, both a part of a series that began with Eagle Of The Ninth, and you recognise that through the heirloom ring which appears in each novel, but these are the Arthurian ones. However, for this post I will focus on those set later.

If you haven’t read Susan Cooper’s Dark Is Rising series, you have really missed out. There are five books in the series, starting with Over Sea, Under Stone and ending with Silver On The Tree. By the end of the series, the level has risen from children’s to YA fiction. I think the masterpiece of the series is the second, The Dark Is Rising, but they are all classics. There are two sets of main characters - the Drew children, who find a golden chalice while in Cornwall in the first book and Will Stanton, a boy who lives not far from Windsor Castle and discovers he is an Old One, part of a group fighting the Dark, led by Merlin. Merlin is still around, going by the name Merriman Lyon, with a day job as an archaeologist and university academic. Later in the series we meet Arthur’s son, who was left in the present day for reasons you will learn if you read the series. No spoilers here! I am pleased to say this series, first written in the 1960s, has never been out of print. 

If you are on Twitter, there is an annual Dark Is Rising readathon, where people reread and talk about that novel over the time in which it’s set, from just before Christmas till after New Year. There is also a podcast that dramatises it, produced by the BBC World Service. You can listen to it for free on the Podcast app. 

A word of warning: absolutely do not watch the film version! Despite having some well known cast members, such as Ian McShane(later cast as Mr Wednesday/Odin in American Gods)as Merriman and Christopher Ecclestone, best known as the Doctor, as the villainous Black Rider, it makes so many changes, including making Will Stanton American and a teenager instead of an eleven year old Brit, it completely ruined the story for me. But the podcast is well worth a listen.

Tomorrow: B is for Beauty And The Beast.