Philip Reeves, whom I had heard of only once before, is the author of Mortal Engines, which I enjoyed very much;  so when I was given the chance to read another of his books I leapt at the thought! 

Here’s a Dark Ages Arthurian story; no magic, no high romanticism, and no chivalrous Lancelot. The story of Arthur is told through Gwyna’s voice, a young girl who is apprenticed to Myrddin, after escaping from her lord's village after Arthur’s war band raided and burnt it down, and that’s when she met Myrddin . Gwyna is disguised as a boy for safety early in the story, and as the story unfolds she switches between male and female in response to changing circumstance. She becomes the ‘Lady in the Lake’ for Myrddin, and learns how easy it is to manufacture magical stories that grow with each retelling. She showed her ability to do this when she scared the life into a non-god fearing priest who was taking advantage of a mentally disturbed Lady by dressing up the lady’s daughter, who was actually a boy, with an old bird's wings and pretending she was a angel!

It is Myrddin’s role as bard to embellish the everyday tales of reality until they become mythical and majestic – and this is such a powerful theme carried right through this story. All he ever does is twist the story slightly to make it sound as if  his lord is a great, clever, charming young man, and does so by not only working with the story but also messing with the people's minds and playing with what they want to hear! The ill-fated romance between the lovely character of Bedwyr and Arthur’s wife Gwenhwyfar, emphasizes the price of deceit and betrayal.

There’s a harsh feel to this story – life is tough, and battles are full of mud, blood, wounds and death, not heroes, clean blows that are one slice kill, as people die a lot of the time by the wound that they have got after the battle, and a ruler always has their flaws. This Arthur is a brutal war-lord, and it is left to his bard to make his exploits presentably ‘heroic’ for the commoners, which Philip Reeve has done extremely well, making Myriddin as the backbone of Arthur’s great story, vital, but not always noticed or as needed as he should be.

An interesting and thoughtful reworking of the Arthurian tale, yet I found slightly lagging in some areas, as it rose up to a great climax like a battle or something and then, it was a little tiresome for a while just droning on. I found he stretched a few chapters a bit to make it longer than was needed, although a short book.

 Outstanding in areas, yet not as gripping than was expected in others, and so only a 4/10 for the great writer who didn’t rise to his full potential in this book.