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Oct. 29th, 2022 09:59 amI am so extremely excited about the release of Aster Glenn Gray's Arthurian novella A Garter as a Lesser Gift! Obviously I am extremely excited for any of Aster's releases but this one in particular I have been Deeply Involved in the creation of (mostly by hissing 'yessssssss do it do it' like Palpatine from the sidelines any time Aster mentioned it) and so in this case my excitement level is more or less off the charts.
This book is a Gawain and the Green Knight riff set during WWII, in which Gawain and the rest of the Round Table are in the RAF, with all the attendant imminent danger and intense homosocial bonding and highly specific cultural norms about honor and ethical behavior. Meanwhile, the Green Knight of course remains a mysterious being who enjoys coming into parties and challenging people to murderous unknowable games about the fear of death, and then setting them up to encounter more romantical but equally unknowable games that also end up being about the fear of death!
Some things I love about A Garter as a Lesser Gift, in no particular order:
- the individual yet immediately recognizable Round Table characterizations
- the way Gawain & the narrative lean on & play in/with/around Rules and Games to explore various types of desire (to be clear this is not an explicit/erotic read but there's a Lot of yearning)
- the intensely ambiguous nature of the Green Knight -- who/what is he? is he immortal? has all this happened before? is this the second or fifty or twentieth Gawain? couldn't tell you but
( spoilers if you're not familiar with the outline of the original story )
- the extremely good yet thematic jokes about midcentury mystery novels
- the lovingly described scones that literally made me get up and start baking at midnight halfway through my first read
Anyway as enthusiastic as I am about the book in and of itself, I also selfishly wish it to sell really well so Aster feels even more compelled to write the sequel about RAF Arthur/Lancelot/Gwen.
This book is a Gawain and the Green Knight riff set during WWII, in which Gawain and the rest of the Round Table are in the RAF, with all the attendant imminent danger and intense homosocial bonding and highly specific cultural norms about honor and ethical behavior. Meanwhile, the Green Knight of course remains a mysterious being who enjoys coming into parties and challenging people to murderous unknowable games about the fear of death, and then setting them up to encounter more romantical but equally unknowable games that also end up being about the fear of death!
Some things I love about A Garter as a Lesser Gift, in no particular order:
- the individual yet immediately recognizable Round Table characterizations
- the way Gawain & the narrative lean on & play in/with/around Rules and Games to explore various types of desire (to be clear this is not an explicit/erotic read but there's a Lot of yearning)
- the intensely ambiguous nature of the Green Knight -- who/what is he? is he immortal? has all this happened before? is this the second or fifty or twentieth Gawain? couldn't tell you but
( spoilers if you're not familiar with the outline of the original story ) - the extremely good yet thematic jokes about midcentury mystery novels
- the lovingly described scones that literally made me get up and start baking at midnight halfway through my first read
Anyway as enthusiastic as I am about the book in and of itself, I also selfishly wish it to sell really well so Aster feels even more compelled to write the sequel about RAF Arthur/Lancelot/Gwen.
