Another of Kennealy-Morrison's (previously billed simply as Kennealy) Keltiad yarns and the second installment of a trilogy, the Tales of Arthur (begun with The Hawk's Gray Feather, not reviewed). The idea is that the Danaans left Ireland in the fifth century in a fleet of spaceships led by Saint Brendan the Astrogator, to found the space empire of Keltia. Not surprisingly, Keltia's history resembles reworked stories from the age of Celtic myth. Arthur's story is narrated by the bard Taliesin; Arthur's sister, whom he will marry for reasons of state, and whom he loathes, is Gweniver. Together they lead the Counterinsurgency against the evil Theocracy of the powerful druid-wizard Edeyrn. Intriguing stuff—if you can tolerate the author's ghastly blend of pseudoscience, fantasy, myth, gnarled prose, absurd plotting, and general air of self-importance.
Pub Date: May 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-451-45352-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: ROC/Penguin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1994
IN THE NEWS
Following his rather fine Dracula-meets-Sherlock Holmes yarn (Seance for a Vampire, 1994), Saberhagen tackles Camelot and King Arthur from a fresh perspective. Soon after the fall of Arthur, a group of players fleeing from the brutal warlord Comorre stumble upon a deserted, half-finished castle, perched dramatically above the sea, that supplies all their needs by magical means. In a sea cave deep beneath the castle, young Arby detects magical emanations from a tremendously powerful oracle—perhaps the rock-entombed bones of the legendary Merlin himself. Meanwhile, a band of Viking warriors arrive by boat and agree to help defend the castle against Comorre. Furthermore, in the 21st century, Dr. Elaine Brusan of the Antrobus Foundation perfects a revolutionary device capable of twisting space, time, and matter. She will soon be visited by the Fisher King, while outside the building stands an ambulance containing the wounded King Arthur, no less, and his sorceress sister, Morgan Le Fay. And all this is merely the prelude to a plot in which many of the characters strive against one another to discover and possess Merlin's bones, while Merlin himself schemes to establish a new and greater Camelot. Wildly, astonishingly different. So, despite a plot that doesn't bear close scrutiny and the irritant of multiple first- person narrators: a truly exhilarating jaunt.
Pub Date: April 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-312-85563-X
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1995
A collection of 21 stories and one novella—Welsh's second book, but his first published stateside—that will inevitably be compared to last year's Booker winner, James Kelman. The Scottish dialect, the urban lowlife characters, and the vulgar slang all make a similar claim to authenticity. Welsh's punters prowl the streets of Edinburgh, not Kelman's Glasgow, a distinction likely to be lost on most American readers. In any case, not all of his mean and grungy stories rely on a thick Scottish brogue, though a number of casual pieces are one-joke gimmicks. In the sci-fi-ish ``Vat '96,'' a head is kept alive in a jar while ``his'' wife entertains men in his presence; for ``Where the Debris Meets the Sea,'' four Hollywood glamour girls sit poolside and comment on the bodies of working-class men. Such simple reversal is at the center of the title story, in which a newborn and a teenaged acid head exchange bodies in a freak lightning storm. Welsh's best stories, including the novella, ``A Smart Cunt,'' are mostly days-in-the-lives of aimless, drug-addled fellows who live for sex, football, and violence (often in combination). In ``Eurotrash,'' the narrator goes to Amsterdam to kick his habit, and has an affair with a ``repulsive and ugly'' woman who turns out to be a transsexual. ``Granny's Old Junk'' packs a clever punch when it's revealed that the little old lady who's about to be ripped off by her junky grandson is a longtime user herself. Such brutal ironies come easily to Welsh, as does a nihilism that seems designed for effect. In ``The Last Resort on the Adriatic,'' a ten-year grieving widower joins his wife in a shipside suicide; and the video-obsessed drudge in ``Snuff,'' having seen every film in his guide, records his own suicide on videotape. Welsh often settles for shock value, sleazy sex, and heroin chic, but he's actually a better writer than many who've been here before, especially Burroughs and his epigones.
Pub Date: April 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-393-31280-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
