[.ca] Mordred, Bastard Son: The Mordred Trilogy, Part I (ISBN 1555838995)

An interesting take on an old tale:
Having read more than my fair share of Arthurian variations, I couldn't help but pick up Douglas Clegg's twist on the often cursory character of Mordred. Casting him as a gay youth growing up subject to the folkloric twists of fate we expect from legendary tales is an interesting device. The book isn't without its challenges. I occasionally found myself questioning why the author chose one direction or another. Overall, however, I found myself captivated and curious about what would follow in the promised trilogy. I also found it refreshing that Clegg neither glorifies nor villifies his lead character, but allowed Mordred to fumble ahead as a not-so-entirely-innocent victim of the fate that the reader knows is ahead. By challenging some of the roles of the Arthurian legend, the author does come up with a unique take on the tale that I'm sure wil be interesting to any gay reader. The largest problem with the hardcover version was that several typographic and editing errors seem to have persisted into the published work -- which is a significant annoyance and distraction. There's nothing more jarring when you are trying to immerse yourself and suspend your disbelief (the true pleasure of reading) than having to reread a sentence and perform corrections for the text to make sense! I truly hope this gets corrected in the paperback version. If you're gay and love fantasy and folklore, you won't want to miss this one. I'm not certain how much broader appeal it will eventually receive. I'd give it 3.5 stars if I could, but am optimistic the series will develop into something very interesting.

Interesting idea, but the story itself falls short.:
The concept (a retelling of the King Arthur legend from Mordred's point of view) is interesting, but the prose and the story itself are, overall, way too slow-paced and descriptive for my liking. Excluding the actual romance part of it, anyway, which is too quick. Mutual-and-immediately-acted-on love-and-lust at first sight really isn't any fun to read about.

Hope there is a sequel:
A refreshing and interesting take on a tale retold many times. I was intrigued by Clegg's take here but I would love to see this continued at some point.