Israeli-born, London-dwelling World Fantasy Award winner Lavie Tidhar (Osama; The Violent Century) proves the Matter of Britain still matters with this stylishly gritty, gripping reimagining of Arthurian legend.
Whereas T.H. White's Arthur dreamed of tempering might with right, Tidhar's post-Roman Londinium births a species of monarch closer to crime lords for whom "to be a king is to be judge and executioner both, and rule by force alone." In this violent, unsanitized world, Arthur and his "boys," including his foster brother, Kay, make their mark by stealing and selling a shipment of hallucinatory fungus known as Goblin Fruit. Merlin, a fae parasite who feeds on power, assists Arthur's rise with magic and manufactured prophecies. Future queen and expert thief Guinevere leads a crew of deadly, hedonistic women called the Choir of Angels, and Judean knight Lancelot uses his martial arts expertise to help his mad master search for the Grail, an alien weapon that fell from the sky and landed in Britannia. Somehow the band of thugs builds their Camelot, but in a land where fortune answers to force alone, no peace can last.
Tarantino meets Monty Python in this wry, blood-soaked tour of legends that thumbs its nose at purism. Scripted by eldritch puppet masters, Arthur's reign has little glory and often props itself up with the same nationalism and xenophobia his legend has been used to invoke in real life. A mythology for a new generation, Tidhar's irreverent revisioning replaces dramatic heroism with acerbity and absurdity. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads