Knights of the Round Table: Gawain

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Knights of the Round Table: Gawain is both the third book that Rowley has published and the third in this interesting series that puts a different spin on the legends of those mythic knights. Rowley’s writing is intelligent, witty, and filled with great imagination. In this book she features the courageous, honorable Gawain, along with the enchantress he thought he had lost.

As the story opens, Arthur and Gawain are entering a forest to seek out Somer Gromer Jour, who a year earlier had bested Arthur in a fight. At that time Somer Gromer Jour asked Arthur to discover what every woman desires and to return in a year with the answer. Arthur and his knights have scoured the country, asking all manner of women the question and they have a rather long list of possible answers, although both Arthur and Gawain know that they do not have the correct answer to the riddle. Luckily for them, however, an enchantress named Aislyn has heard of their task and waits to intercept them. She recognized the challenge as one given by Morgause, Gawain’s mother, Arthur’s half sister, and a very powerful sorceress. Aislyn was her apprentice, but escaped five years ago, and while she realizes that helping the king puts her in danger from Morgause, she cannot let him go to his death.

But Aislyn didn’t expect Gawain. Five years ago, while still in Morgause’s service, Aislyn and Gawain were in love – or at least she thought they were. Morgause had ordered her apprentice to win over her son from Arthur’s side to theirs by any means necessary. While Aislyn worked to gain Gawain’s trust, however, she fell in love. Realizing how deeply she has sunk into evil, she confesses the whole plot to Gawain and begs him to take her with him to Camelot. He refuses and rides away, leaving her to face his mother alone. Aislyn escapes, but has been carrying a rather large grudge since. When she sees Gawain accompanying Arthur, she knows that she cannot let him see her. She quickly transforms herself into a hideous crone and concocts a devious plan that will bring her revenge and safety from Morgause: She will give Arthur the answer if Gawain will marry her, the crone, and take her with him to Camelot.

Gawain accepts, as Aislyn knew he would, because he is a loyal knight who would do anything to protect his king. They travel back to Camelot and Aislyn has fun embarrassing Gawain. Everything progresses according to plan until Morgana, Arthur’s other sister and another powerful sorceress, shows up. She immediately realizes what Aislyn has done and cannot abide someone toying with her favorite nephew. She waves her hand and all of a sudden Aislyn is stuck in the crone’s body, unable to tell anyone what Morgana has done to her or her true identity. The only thing that will save her is a kiss given with love and received in kind. But Aislyn has already done a good job getting on Gawain’s bad side and it will take a lot to get him to freely kiss a hideous crone with love.

This book was certainly imaginative and read something like a fairy tale, with the knight providing a kiss that will break an enchantment. The writing was intelligent and flowed well. The beginning of the book was particularly humorous and witty, before it got into the more serious issue of sorting out what really happened to the couple five years prior. I also liked that Aislyn got exactly what she deserved. I did not like her much at first, because she was vain, petty, and irresponsible in her use of magic. But then she received punishment for those things and learned lessons during her punishment. This made her a more rounded character than Gawain, who had his code to live by and did so at all times. While his annoying take on male-female relationships was consistent with the times, I found his growth process less satisfying.

A couple of things bothered me about the story, however. It can be difficult to see the depth of love between Gawain and Aislyn because she is in crone form for so long and when she finally breaks out of it, the two have many misunderstandings. The placement of this book in the series also confused me. Lancelot’s book comes first and while I haven’t read it, it seems that in that intial book, he should have had his bout of growing up, maturing, and finding a girl. I expected that to have already happened since his story is supposed to be complete, but in this book he is immature, rude, and completely alone…when he’s not hovering over Guinevere. If the author included an explanation as to where the various books in the series fall chronologically, it would have lessened the confusion.

Even so, Knights of the Round Table: Gawain is interesting and fun, and the couple had to overcome quite a few personal and collective issues to find their HEA. Arthur’s knights have always been intriguing and this new spin on the old stories is worth looking into. In fact, I’ll be checking out the other books in this series myself.

Reviewed by Andi Davis

Grade: B-

Book Type: Fantasy Romance

Sensuality: Warm

Review Date: 19/09/07

Publication Date: 2007

Recent Comments …

  1. excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.

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