skygiants | (no subject)

I think it's a real shame that sff publishing has pivoted so firmly towards Big Hardbacks for Everything and I am feeling it particularly now, just after finishing Thomas D. Lee's Perilous Times. By all rights this book should have been published as a brightly-colored paperback with a cover by Darrel K. Sweet, and I would have found it in an independent bookstore and exclaimed "wow this looks wild" with profound delight. Instead I have been lugging around a 500-page hardcover with a serious stylized beige cover design which in no way indicated to me the level of ride I was about to be taken on. I think my best analogy is that this feels like reading a particularly fun Sheri S. Tepper book, with all the same enthusiastic ecofeminism but without the unfortunate eugenicist strain and with a better sense of humor.

Okay, so the plot of Perilous Times: King Arthur's knights, including POV characters Sir Kay (protagonist?ish) and Sir Lancelot (narrative foil), have been asleep under their respective magical trees for the past 1500ish years on the understanding that they will periodically be awakened to Fight For Britain, die once or twice in the course of the fight, and then go back to their dirt naps. For the past 500ish years, their efforts have been directed by a government bureaucrat; this for some reason is Evil Immortal Christopher Marlowe.

This time around Kay climbs out of the ground in the middle of a near-future climate-apocalypse Britain just in time to assist a young ecoterrorist (Mariam, actual protagonist) in blowing up an oil rig, after which he gets more or less recruited to help her ecoterrorist cell sort out something to do about saving the world. Meanwhile, Lancelot gets woken up by Evil Immortal Christopher Marlowe, who tells him that Kay has taken up with terrorists and sets him after him For the Good of the Realm.

Kay is exhausted, Lancelot's deeply nihilist and a bit racist, Arthur [absent most of the book in Avalon] is a paranoid warlord and nobody actually wants him back. The broad message of the book is that You Can't Rely on Heroes of the Past to save you and You Have to Take Action on Climate in the present and Also Fuck Billionaires and it's about as subtle as a sack of bricks about it in every respect. That is fine. Do not read this book for subtlety, or for a particularly nuanced take on the inevitable corruptions of power, the challenges of leftist coalition-building, or the struggle to create utopia. Read it for Lancelot blasting 80s rock from the back of his motorcycle as he rolls through the landscape. Read it for Merlin's master plan to save the world by drugging the population with reincarnation cordyceps fungi. Read it for the extremely funny scene in which Kay and Mariam attend the Manchester revolutionary council:

The communists herd them through to a conference room, where a narrow table stretches along the width of the building. The communists sit at one end, under a portrait of Friedrich Engels, with his massive beard. Everyone else hurries to sit as close to them as possible, fighting over seats.

Kay sighs, looking up and down at the long table. On the verge of saying something.

"What?" Mariam asks.

"This is why ..." says Kay, making a circle with his hands. "Ah, never mind."

Read it for the part when Mariam has to slay a dragon by herself because Lancelot and Kay are too busy having the world's stupidest duel and then gets proclaimed Queen of Wales. Read it for SURPRISE CLONES. Read it for the blink-and-you-missed-it reveal about aliens. Read it for Chekhov's Deradicalized Former Neo-Nazi Former Squirrel. Read it for the ride!!

I do think it's very funny that nobody seems to be able to write a Kay book without fully slagging on both Lancelot and Arthur. This Kay is not at all in the woobie strain, he's Just a Guy who's been missing his dead wife (most heterosexual Kay I've ever met!) for 1500 years. (He's also British-African, and I deeply appreciate that unlike many Arthurian retellings which make a point of race-swapping one of the original Round Table, this one actually remembers the existence of Palomides and Safir.) His guilt is about throwing Arthur in the way of power when Arthur was clearly not ready for it and there's a bit of an implication that perhaps if he hadn't Arthur wouldn't have grown into a monster, but Arthur is a monster in a way that is very grounded in the texts but that I personally find much less interesting than Arthur as a guy who is genuinely trying and making mistakes about it. Also I think it undercuts the messages of the book, also it makes the backstories about Merlin and Herne and Morgan and the various other people who built up Arthur as the guy who was going to fix everything not make a ton of sense. But again we are not going for subtlety here and we roll with it.

Lancelot, meanwhile is Portrait of a White Gay Man who aligns himself with power because it's easier than opposing it until he gets his redemption arc in the back half of the book, along with the reveal that he and Guinevere were completely chaste and he just rescued her to help her out when Arthur started getting paranoid about her. (The fact that they were not in love is not a reveal, just the fact that his motives were apparently altruistic about it.) He's in love with Galehaut, and also bangs Evil Immortal Kit Marlowe, because if you've got them in the same place you might as well. 'Lancelot who never liked Arthur and has no personal relationship with Guinevere at all' is a very hot take and not my favorite, but if you're going to take a left to dodge the Arthurian Trio then ending up back at the Galehaut romance is a fun deep cut and I'm not mad about it.

Morgan is also there. She is Arthur's Cousin running complex and sinister plans with good ecofeminist intentions. Mordred is mentioned VERY briefly. We are Not Discussing The Incest Allegations Here!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

toft

EVIL IMMORTAL CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

From:

skygiants

EVIL IMMORTAL CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

he's part of a secret society (this also appears for the space of two pages) and they call him Brother Tamburlaine

From:

troisoiseaux

This is so much and I need to read it immediately.

From:

skygiants

thank you that's exactly the reaction I was hoping for

From:

chestnut_pod

for some reason is Evil Immortal Christopher Marlowe -- Whatever the reason is, it's a good one.

Chekhov's Deradicalized Former Neo-Nazi Former Squirrel -- Meanwhile, this is the single most convincing recommendation I've ever received.

From:

skygiants

when that squirrel went on the mantelpiece I was like 'this squirrel BETTER pan out at some point, this better not be a wasted Chekhov's Squirrel' and LO AND BEHOLD

From:

osprey_archer

Chekhov's Deradicalized Former Neo-Nazi Former Squirrel

What the WHAT now? Did a squirrel become a human who then became a neo-Nazi?

I also prefer an Arthur who is at least trying to do good, but Arthur who is just a cranky average king dude is also lying right there on the surface of Le Morte d'Arthur so I can't complain too much about that one. Lancelot who is not in love with either Arthur OR Guinevere, though! Wow! That's a very hot take indeed. Perhaps a little too hot!

I do however love that the author dug into the deep lore to find Galehaut, simply because I am delighted that some early Arthurian author wrote a story about Galehaut loving Lancelot so much that he died of pining. Truly astonished that T. H. White made no use of this story! But perhaps it's so obscure he didn't know about it? Harder to dig things up pre-internet.

From:

thistleingrey

But perhaps it's so obscure he didn't know about it?

For medievalists doing English- or French-inflected Arthuriana C19-C20, the Vulgate Cycle is pretty much front and center; the prose Tristan has been much read, too. I have no strong opinions about what T. H. White may or may not have wanted to fit in his writing, but (having begun my own medievalist training late C20, thus with some teachers b. 1920s and '30s) "too obscure" seems unlikely to me.

From:

skygiants

No, the reverse! Kay fights a bunch of racists and kills most of them but accidentally turns one of them into a squirrel instead; fortunately Experiencing Life While Small Talking Squirrel teaches the squirrel the error of his ways, and then he renounces hate and becomes Kay's sidekick for a while in the hopes of finding a way to turn him human again. (After this occurs he kisses Kay on the mouth in joy, but Kay is too heterosexual to pursue any further investigations down this avenue.)

My guess would be that White was not interested in Galehaut because his Self-Determined Project was very much to Interpret Malory, and Malory is not interested in Galehaut ... much to bemoan in the limitations of Malory tbh.

From:

sovay

"This is why ..." says Kay, making a circle with his hands. "Ah, never mind."

That is extremely funny.

(I will probably give the book itself a miss because I am a very hard sell on zero-sum retellings, almost to the point of dealbreaker these days, but I like British-African Kay.)

Edited Date: 2023-08-03 07:24 pm (UTC)

From:

ethelmay

Gotta admit that one took me a second. I had done some kind of monster eye-skip and had the wrong context.

From:

skygiants

This was the moment where I went from 'I am having a great time with this book' to 'perhaps this book is good?'

(I'm curious what you mean by zero-sum retellings -- could you elaborate a little more on that?)

From:

sovay

(I'm curious what you mean by zero-sum retellings -- could you elaborate a little more on that?)

The slagging on Arthur and Lancelot—retellings which have a finite amount of sympathy and complexity to go around, especially if they are working with characters not typically figured as heroes. If your protagonist is Loki, the Æsir have to suck, etc. At its worst, it produces really anvillicious galaxy brain like HAVE YOU EVER CONSIDERED THE GREEKS MIGHT HAVE BEEN THE BAD GUYS IN THE TROJAN WAR??? I mean, I've read Euripides, yes.

From:

oracne

Read it for the part when Mariam has to slay a dragon by herself because Lancelot and Kay are too busy having the world's stupidest duel and then gets proclaimed Queen of Wales. Read it for SURPRISE CLONES. Read it for the blink-and-you-missed-it reveal about aliens. Read it for Chekhov's Deradicalized Former Neo-Nazi Former Squirrel. Read it for the ride!!

Sold!

From:

skygiants

:DDDD

From:

thistleingrey

this one actually remembers the existence of Palomides and Safir

Excellent. (Not enough to get me to read, but I'm glad the book exists!)

From:

skygiants

They're not around in the narrative except as tree-knights in potentia, but at least they are namechecked and conceptually present!

From:

marginaliana

"This is why ..." says Kay, making a circle with his hands. "Ah, never mind." - oh man oh man oh man this is delightful

From:

skygiants

I laughed out loud!

From:

jamethiel

This sounds AMAZING

From:

skygiants

I had a fantastic time with it!

From:

lirazel

WOW!!!!!

From:

skygiants

I picked this up from the library like '480 pages?!' in a tone of disbelief and horror but I take it all back. He needed every one of those 480 pages. He makes them all work for him.

From:

starlady

I'm not sure I could take this but it does sound pretty amazing.

I get why publishers have largely ditched MMPBs as a format, but I do wish they still published more books direct to trade paperback, as you say. It certainly isn't the case that hardcovers are cheaper to produce!

From:

skygiants

Yeah, I really don't think it's a boon to the industry to have any new book be a 25-bucks-or-nothing proposition. Like I get that if you're buying a book rather than an ebook it's perhaps in part because you have some appreciation for the material object ... but I love the material objects that are MMPBs!

From:

komadori

This sounds exactly like my cup of tea. You had me at ecofeminism and evil immortal Christopher Marlowe but OMG Palomides and Safir!

From:

skygiants

yessss I hope you enjoy if you read! (Palomides and Safir are mostly just namechecked but I was just so glad to see their names checked!)

From:

scintilla10

Oh my god, this book sounds like A Ride!! XD

From:

skygiants

IT REALLY TRULY WAS

From:

mific

Thanks for the rec - the audiobook was excellent!

From:

skygiants

oh awesome, I'm so glad you enjoyed it!

From:

conuly

We are Not Discussing The Incest Allegations Here!

Why not? It seems on par with the rest of the book.

From:

aamcnamara

Morgan and Nimue hanging out shittalking each other's choices and reluctantly agreeing to collaborate to take down The Man was maybe my favorite part of this book. Among many enjoyable moments in this wild ride.