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Ragnarok
Thor goes in search of the Well of Mimir, the Well of Knowledge, a quest fraught with danger in the penultimate issue of this first arc!
432 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1989
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 2, 2013
I used to read Arthurian fiction by the bucket load: the good, the bad and the indifferent. I picked this book up because it cleverly tied into the Arthurian mythos in its blurb, but this is in fact a ruse. It took me some time to realise that this book wasn't about Arthur's legacy at all, it was about those grubby Saxons he had always fought against.
So it was that this book actually changed my life. Well, perhaps not life, but certainly my reading habits. I do not think that I have been tempted to read another Arthurian book again, although I could be tempted to read The Crystal Cave and the books that followed it again. The book makes many little historical jokes along the way, such as the copyist changing "Arthur took the sword from the Saxon" to "Arthur took the sword from the stone" (it made more sense as an error in Latin).
So, who is it about? It is about a Welsh girl called Rowena who is promised in marriage to Ida of Bernicia, but when she gets there, the old man dies and she marries his son AEthelric instead. She grows accustomed to living with the barbarous Saxons after a while, and she sees that she can influence the current king and his successors (her children, of course) and that the Arthurian dream can be realised in this northern people who once fought against Arthur.
I have posted this review because I realised that I have elsewhere cited this book in my own biographical details, yet it remains obscure and undervalued. I do not think that I would have read Anglo-Saxon Studies, nor would I have written The Adventures of the Billy Goats Gruff in quite the same way if it wasn't for reading this book.
Read it! I hope that it can change your life too.
So it was that this book actually changed my life. Well, perhaps not life, but certainly my reading habits. I do not think that I have been tempted to read another Arthurian book again, although I could be tempted to read The Crystal Cave and the books that followed it again. The book makes many little historical jokes along the way, such as the copyist changing "Arthur took the sword from the Saxon" to "Arthur took the sword from the stone" (it made more sense as an error in Latin).
So, who is it about? It is about a Welsh girl called Rowena who is promised in marriage to Ida of Bernicia, but when she gets there, the old man dies and she marries his son AEthelric instead. She grows accustomed to living with the barbarous Saxons after a while, and she sees that she can influence the current king and his successors (her children, of course) and that the Arthurian dream can be realised in this northern people who once fought against Arthur.
I have posted this review because I realised that I have elsewhere cited this book in my own biographical details, yet it remains obscure and undervalued. I do not think that I would have read Anglo-Saxon Studies, nor would I have written The Adventures of the Billy Goats Gruff in quite the same way if it wasn't for reading this book.
Read it! I hope that it can change your life too.
May 21, 2024
Wow wat a book! I absolutely loved it and it transported me to a different time and place. But would it have killed the author to tell us what happened to Elrich?? Seriously!!
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews