Knight of the Sacred Lake Book Review
Rosalind Miles' Second Installment of the Guenevere Trilogy
Jun 4, 2009
Rosalind Miles' first book in this historical fiction trilogy, simple entitled Guenevere, was an engrossing tale of how Guenevere and Arthur met, fell in love, made Arthur High King of the Britons, and consequently fell out of love after their son's death and Arthur's incest with his sister, Morgan Le Fay. She turned to her knight, Lancelot, for love and comfort but in the end sent him away because due to her marriage, she could not really be with her true love.
Knight of the Sacred Lake (published in June 2001, ISBN 9780609808023) is unfortunately a mere shadow of its predecessor and is a prime example of when a series should have just stayed a single book.
The Story of Knight of the Sacred Lake
Most of the book's focus is on the never ending cycle of "we can be together, no we can't be together" between Lancelot and Guenevere. Guenevere comes from a religion of the Goddess Mother where women have the "thigh-freedom" to pick whomever she chooses, and this is especially true for queens as they always have their knights. However, since she married Arthur and he is trying to appease the Christians, she really can't implement her thigh-freedom with her knight. So it's a lot of back and forth between the two of them, with Arthur as clueless as ever.
In addition, there is the story of the four brothers of the Orkneys, sons to Morgause, Arthur's sister. The second son, Agravain, is jealous of his elder brother, Gawain's birthright and is resentful that his mother is exercising her thigh-freedom with a knight around his age. In fact, it's his actions in the last one hundred pages of the book that really give the book any feeling of plot.
And there's Merlin's quest for Mordred and Morgan Le Fay's hatred of Arthur's happiness. But these storylines are fleeting and seem to only be present to help further tie this book to the previous one.
Rosalind Miles Wrote More Propaganda Than Plot
Because there is so seemingly little plot to the novel, the themes of anti-Christianity and feminism grossly overpower the book. Both of these themes are touched on in the first book, but just enough to help the reader understand Guenevere's background, faith, and why the Christians are against her.
However, this time around, the reader is practically flogged with Christians bashing both women and the Goddess religion of the Summer Country and Goddess-worshipers constantly commenting on how the Christians seem to abhor beauty and love. It's so blatant that one can't help but wonder if this was the author's true motivation for writing the book.
On one hand, it's easy to see how this could more than likely be what happened when the Christians came to England, but on the other, since the persecution of religion is a side story, this much propaganda is a little uncalled for. This book only really needed it as thick in a couple spots: Guenevere's trial of witchcraft and the evacuation of the Hallows from the Lake (the Christians claimed the relics were the Holy Grail).
Stop Reading at Guenevere
It is very easy to recommend Guenevere, especially to those who enjoy reading about Arthur, Guenevere, Lancelot, and Camelot. However, unfortunately, it's also just as easy to recommend foregoing the rest of the trilogy.
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