Lancelot by Giles Kristian BOOK REVIEW

Giles Kristian is a new name to me - I knew little about the author when I picked up Lancelot and a quick Google quest told me that he had written several well received action/adventure novels that centered on the Vikings, as well as a brace of books set around the English civil war. He also co-wrote a book with Wilbur Smith.

I purchased Lancelot because I've always been something of a sucker for all things Arthurian, and I have, over the years, read many books that used the legends as a starting point but what I found in this book was a totally original retelling of the famed sagas, that uses the love triangle between Arthur, Lancelot and Guinevere in a totally audacious way that allows the author to present several remarkable twists and turns that literally, I kid you not, had me open mouthed. I soaked deep, allowing the fiction to submerge me,  into the world of a story well told.

There is something of a lyrical poetry to the author's style, but at the same time the story is straight forward and propels the reader along in the way all the best fiction does. It's a big book, topping six hundred pages, but not once during the narrative did the engine stall. I'd recommend this book highly to anyone who fancies escaping into a well realised world and spending time with wonderfully drawn characters.

The story is told in the first person with Lancelot himself the narrator, and through this device the post Roman landscape is brought vividly to life. We follow the young man through his childhood, and into adulthood where he meets and is bound to King Arthur, the high king of the Britons. It is a story of war, of betrayal, of jealously but mostly it is the story of love.

Bloody marvelous, it is.

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