Reviews with content warning for Suicide attempt - Half Sick of Shadows

I love to go back to Camelot and Avalon! And, it was no different here, it was actually pretty amazing seeing it all through the eyes of a new character, one rarely mentioned on the story tales, Elaine, the Lady of Chalot.
When young she feels cursed by her ability to see the future, her mother stifles it fearing for her as magic, which only the fae or fae descendants have, is banned from the kingdom by Uther Pendragon, father of Arthur and Morgana, who have been long away from the court of Camelot raised by the fae in Avalon with their two friends Lancelot and Guinevere. Until, one day Morgana, in a visit to court, meets Elaine and convinces her she’s blessed and should go back with her to Avalon.
You all know of Arthur being the foretold king, of his mad witch sister Morgana, of Guinevere and Lancelot’s betrayal, of Merlin, but not like it’s told in this tale.
Here the women have voices, have reasons, they’re the force of the tale, specially our lady of Chalot, and love and betrayal, going mad or sad is not as simple as you may think.
The narrative is complex as it’s being told solely by Elaine, it starts as the friends are about to leave Avalon in their twenties finally returning to Camelot to fulfil their destinies. And, it starts with her knowing all the events that will come to pass in their near future, and they’re not good, not at all, then she goes back to the past to explain how it all started, their friendships, Arthur and Gwen’s love story, Morgana’s magic, and Lancelot… but, then she’s having a vision into the future in the past, then in the present, the visions are always similar but evolving, as Nimue, the lady of the lake, has taught her the future changes, but as you follow Elaine back and forth, they don’t really seem to, and she knows it all. Living and loving with the knowledge she has is not easy, the decisions she has to make harder still, and that’s mostly the plot of the book, the arc of this one character as she juggles how to lead Arthur to his destiny without the “bad” things having to happen even though she doesn’t see a way to avoid them.
I really enjoyed the book, but the strange narrative the going back and forth, the repetitive visions, knowing only the other characters by how she sees them and tells them (not shows) was sometimes a bit too much, still if that doesn’t bother you I definitely recommend it.
It was a refreshing take on the mythical stories of these characters, if dark and sad.

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tc_booksandmore's review against another edition

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adventurous reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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bookishkale's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated

4.25

Content Warnings

cactuscloudsreads's review against another edition

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reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I can see where the author thought she was going with making Elaine’s story (originally by Tennyson) into a powerful feminist retelling. Homie, this was not a feminist book. It was more like an example of why not to let women run things. It was painfully redundant, slow and the ending tells a horrible story to anyone suffering from depression.

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wjiaei's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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theaceofbooks's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I viscerally loved and viscerally disliked aspects of this book.

The good: The story is told through multiple timelines, and it’s fun to watch them affect one another. The ending is poignant and clever. Also, I’ve never read a modern Arthurian legend retelling focused around the Lady of Shallot before.

The bad: The book is full of anachronisms—and not intentionally. (Peter Beagle does an awesome job with intentional anachronism in The Last Unicorn.) One character drinks hot chocolate, another uses the word ‘polyamorous’ (which wasn’t coined until 1990ish, I think), and so on. I felt as if I was reading about young adults from 2021 dropped into a shallow Arthurian setting. It kept pulling me out of the story, even though I wanted to enjoy it.

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mdelcol's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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