Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Historical adventure fiction

CAMELOT

Giles Kristian

This is the story of Galahad, Lancelot's son the reluctant warrior who dared to keep the dream of Camelot alive.

Britain is a land riven by anarchy, slaughter, famine, filth and darkness. Its armies are destroyed, its heroes dead, or missing. Arthur and Lancelot fell in the last great battle and Merlin has not been seen these past ten years. Now, the Saxons are gathering again, their warbands stalk the land, their king seeks dominion. As for the lords and kings of Britain, they look only to their own survival and will not unite as they once did under Arthur and his legendary sword Excalibur.

But in an isolated monastery in the marshes of Avalon, a novice of the order is preparing to take his vows when the life he has known is suddenly turned upside down in a welter of blood. Two strangers - the wild-spirited, Saxon-killing Iselle and the ageing warrior Gawain - will pluck the young man from the wreckage of his simple existence. Together, they will seek the last druid and the cauldron of a god. And the young man must come to terms with his legacy and fate as the son of the most celebrated yet most infamous of Arthur's warriors: Lancelot.

Available products
Book Published 2020-05-14 by Transworld

Comments

Has Kristian surpassed LANCELOT? In a word, yes - which in itself is an immense achievement. But together, these two novels represent something altogether more monumental. Nothing short of a new milestone in British myth-making. It deserves to be an instant classic.

Camelot gave me one-hell of a punch. It contained some of the best writing in historical-fiction today and completely knocked me off my feet. It had the emotion and intimacy of Lancelot, just with something more. A phenomenal read.

Adventure, intrigue and love abound in this retelling of a tale that is veiled in myth and legend... Kristian's writing weaves a spell on the reader as surely as Merlin at the height of his powers. Kristian has done it again. Camelot is a wonderful book.

This is SUCH a good book. I loved it - the sense of time and place is so beautiful, so haunting. And the people, as ever, are bitingly real. Wrapped in the rich lore of the Arthurian saga, Giles has given us a vital, glorious story: rich, rewarding, and utterly revealing of our times - Camelot is a novel you'll savour long after the last page has been turned.

Giles Kristian's sequel to his acclaimed Arthurian novel Lancelot is, in some ways, even better than the first book. In Camelot, we get another dose of sweet, poignant love story and another bucketful of kick-ass, spine-jolting, war-is-hell action. But the prose is even more sumptuous than in the previous book; the descriptions of the Dark Ages landscape more lush, precise and wonderfully poetic. Kristian evokes post-Roman Britain in a masterly fashion, totally immersing the reader into the dank, misty, marshlands of hounded Britons and brutal Saxon invaders; of Merlin's twisty, amoral magic and the raw, skinned-knuckle courage of the warrior trapped in the bloody crush of the shield wall. It is, in short, an absolute triumph. Highly recommended, especially to fans of Bernard Cornwall's seminal Warlord Chronicles.

Wow, what a wonderful book. Beautifully evocative and bone-crunchingly bloody, filled with characters I loved and hated, all conveyed in beautifully lyrical prose and edged with the sense of hope and tragedy that is essential for any retelling of the Arthurian tale. It was fabulous to go back to 5th-century Britain and dive into the fray again.

After finishing Lancelot, I had my doubts whether Camelot could have the same impact on me, whether it could captivate and enchant me in the same way. I needn't have feared. Kristian once again works his sorcery, and weaves a superb blend of high fantasy and historical fiction, enriched by luscious prose... herein lies the beauty of Camelot, it is a book where the past hauntingly mirrors the present.