Mordred Bastard Son The Chronicles of Mordred Volume 1 Douglas Clegg 9781944668099 Books
Download As PDF : Mordred Bastard Son The Chronicles of Mordred Volume 1 Douglas Clegg 9781944668099 Books
I was born during the fires of Beltane. My mother was called the Witch-Queen and my father, Arthur, King of the Britons. From New York Times bestselling author Douglas Clegg comes a spellbinding novel of Arthurian historical fantasy.
Conceived in violence, born of royalty, and raised in exile, Mordred grows to manhood torn between his powerful mother’s desire for revenge, his own conflicted feelings towards the father who betrayed him, and his passionate coming of age into first love with one of the greatest knights of Camelot.
Reviews of Mordred, Bastard Son
*Starred Review* “Riveting…Clegg puts an inspired wrinkle in the hoary tale of Arthur and the grail by casting Arthur’s kindred enemy, Mordred, as a gay man. An injured stranger in a cloak and odd, paganish mask, is captured and held in a monastery, igniting wild speculation among the locals, who believe him a notorious traitor. And so he is. He is Mordred, the bastard son of Arthur Pendragon and his half sister, the witch-queen Morgan Le Fay, and he now awaits trial for murder and treason…How excellent.” – Booklist
“Douglas Clegg’s stunning Mordred, Bastard Son will inspire and refresh…” – Michael Rowe, Advocate Magazine
“Clegg (The Priest of Blood) maintains a nice balance between the human and mythic dimensions of his characters, portraying the familiar elements of their story from refreshingly original angles.” – Publishers Weekly
“Well-crafted. Written in lyrical prose with colorful characters and historical depth. Lovers of both history and fantasy will discover…an enchanting read.” – Edge Boston
“Clegg beautifully skewers the Arthurian legends, weaving a compelling story, single-handedly reinventing Mordred’s sexuality. He is no longer the betrayer of Arthur, the knight Lancelot, and Guinevere, Queen of the Britons; he is now the seductive and passionate hero, a lover of men given the almost insurmountable task of finding the cauldron of rebirth…” – Michael Leonard, Curled Up with a Good Book Blog
“…Magic—true magic that really works—takes center stage in…Mordred, Bastard Son…a refreshing return to the myth and magic of the legends…Clegg’s approach recalls Sir Thomas Mallory, Chrétien de Troyes, and even Edmund Spenser at times; his setting is never made temporally explicit but rather melds Celtic, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, and high medieval British elements.” – Strange Horizons
Discover Douglas Clegg's fiction
Lights Out Neverland The Children’s Hour The Halloween Man You Come When I Call You The Hour Before Dark Nightmare House Mischief The Infinite The Abandoned Isis The Necromancer Goat Dance Breeder Afterlife Purity Dark of the Eye The Words Wild Things Bad Karma Red Angel Night Cage Naomi The Nightmare Chronicles The Attraction Night Asylum The Priest of Blood The Lady of Serpents The Queen of Wolves Dinner with the Cannibal Sisters Mordred, Bastard Son
Mordred Bastard Son The Chronicles of Mordred Volume 1 Douglas Clegg 9781944668099 Books
For gay men fascinated with the classics of myth and romance, there is often a certain level of gratification missing: the pleasure of reading the accounts of our own heroes and their place in the course of human history and myth. The author has successfully cast Mordred and another central character as being open to same sex love, and the tale is all the richer for it. After reading this book I couldn't imagine the story told in any other way, I FELT Mordred's longing, frustration and ultimate realisation of his special nature. His first unrequited love is recounted in a very tender and authentic manner, immediately recognisable to those of us who walked this same path in our youth.The ancient world of Arthurian legend is beautifully brought to life with numerous references to the Old Religion that will be appreciated by neo-Pagan readers. All of the original cast are included, with the addition of the author's special insight and sensitive treatment of the "gay angle". Not just a rewrite of the same old stock literary figures and synopsis, I fell in LOVE with Mordred, the person (not to mention the man he finds romantic passion with, but I won't give that away). The women in the story are healers, leaders, villains...passionate, fully-realised human portrayals of the characters we know from older works but now become believable as sisters, mothers, and priestesses in a world that humans can't always control or understand. One is often reminded that life is a mystery, there are no easy answers for any of us. Gay or straight, we all experience love and loss, pain and joy and ponder what it all means and why we're here at all. The author weaves these eternal themes skillfully into the narrative with generous doses of humour and occasionally profound sorrow.
We'll have to wait for the next book, in the meantime I'll read this one again, perhaps a few times.
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Mordred Bastard Son The Chronicles of Mordred Volume 1 Douglas Clegg 9781944668099 Books Reviews
A fascinating and startlingly different view of ancient legendary figures, with wholly new interpretations of motivations and pressures. Camelot will never be the same.
Like millions of others around the world, I have always been--well, for seventy-five years, anyway--a fan of the Arthurian legend and the outrageously fictional Camelot. Moreover, I suppose I could say that during that time I have been brainwashed into believing that the `bastard son,' Mordred, was the worm in the apple. Imagine the audacity of Douglas Clegg, therefore, to challenge that idea with his revisionist novel Mordred, Bastard Son [Aylson Books, 2007].
However, that's the fun of writing a story about a story; there's always the other side, and after 600 years I suppose Mordred was due for some favourable press.
Judging from the reviews, it seems that a lot of other people had the same difficulty adjusting to this radical idea as well. It is a story that you either like or not, but having said that I liked it. In my opinion it is a tour-de-force of fantasy, and although I had difficulty grasping the story at first, once I got into it I was hooked.
The difficulty, I think, is with the myriad of gods and goddesses, plus Celtic festivals, i.e. Beltane and Samhain (pronounced "sah-vwin," by the way) that must be introduced in the first chapter, and this is quite a mouthful to digest all at once. Also the transition between the third-person opening, and the first person flashback was a bit awkward. However, as I have already said, once I got passed this the rest of the story ultimately made up for it.
There are some quite interesting innovations, too. For example, the idea that Arthur raped his half sister, Morgan-of-the-Fay, runs amok with the Arthurian legend built upon his infallible character. Likewise, the idea that Arthur `stole' the sword Excalibur from the Lady of the Lake doesn't exactly show his good side. Nevertheless, Mordred is divided in his feelings (at least in this first book of the series) toward his father--hate, on one hand, and an odd sort of affinity on the other.
Morgan le Fay remains Morgana, darkly beautiful with sinister edges, although she is unusually cast as a victim in this story. The `heavy' on the distaff side is her sister Morgause, who turns into something of a `Malificent' [Walt Disney's "Sleeping Beauty"] in the latter part of the story. In fact these two, plus Viviane (the "crone") makes the society within which Mordred is raised a sort of matriarchracy.
On the other hand there is Merlin who, as in all of his other reincarnations, is timeless. He is also omniscient, and having apparently given up on Arthur, has taken Mordred under his wing as a student of the "magick." This sort of thing opens the doors wide to a flight of fancy, and Clegg takes full advantage of it; a real virtuoso rendering of imagination if ever there was one. Principally however, Merlin teaches Mordred the art of "ravelling" and "unravelling" (the mentally sharing of memories, feelings, etc., with another, and, of course, retrieving memories in the same manner). Also, "vesseling," i.e. mental telepathy-sort of the cell phone of Arthurian times.
Another departure from traditional Arthurian legend is found in Clegg's depiction of Lancelot as a hermit, and also gay--or at least bisexual. In one version of Arthur, however, Lancelot is deceived by the Fisher King's daughter into thinking that she is Guinevere, and the resulting liaison results in another bastard, i.e. Galahad. Hearing of this, Guinevere banishes Lancelot, and he is said to have lost his wits and wandered in the wilderness. So, perhaps the hermit characterization is not so removed from the original.
Apart from these innovations, one of the most refreshing departures from the usual GLBT story for me is that, while it is a sexy enough, there is not one really explicit sex scene throughout. It is therefore a love story between men that relies on sentiment and plot to make it happen. Bravo! Five stars.
The concept - the reinvention (rediscovery?) of Mordred as something more than a villain and as a gay man - has a lot of potential. In execution, this potential was tapped, but not quite enough.
The plot is difficult to follow at times, with rambling narratives that veer off and rejoin and veer off again. A comparatively large amount of time is spent wallowing in Mordred's chastity - too much, I think, because I started rolling my eyes at his Raging Hormones well before the wallowing climaxed, as it were. The sentence structure also sometimes goes galloping off with its bit between its teeth, winding on with such convoluted or rambling phrasing that more than one sentence requires rereading to grasp its meaning. Typographical errors and lingering mark-up - although not a huge problem - are also just enough of a presence to occasionally throw me from my reading.
That being said, it was still an interesting book and I'm glad I read it. I look forward to how Mordred will continue to develop as a character within the constraints of Arthurian legend and how the audience for his narrative will evolve with him. Still, I will wish that my local library would carry the future volumes, as I don't know that I'd want to pay for them.
I liked this book. There were many things this book did well and differently and it deserves praise because that is hard to do in this genre. Making Mordred gay really added an interesting dimension to this story. The sequel has been a long time coming, but it looks like it will finally be released next year.
This foray into a variation of the myths of Camelot is clever and intriguing. A well-woven tale, it kept my interest as Mordred revealed the early stories of his life.
For gay men fascinated with the classics of myth and romance, there is often a certain level of gratification missing the pleasure of reading the accounts of our own heroes and their place in the course of human history and myth. The author has successfully cast Mordred and another central character as being open to same sex love, and the tale is all the richer for it. After reading this book I couldn't imagine the story told in any other way, I FELT Mordred's longing, frustration and ultimate realisation of his special nature. His first unrequited love is recounted in a very tender and authentic manner, immediately recognisable to those of us who walked this same path in our youth.
The ancient world of Arthurian legend is beautifully brought to life with numerous references to the Old Religion that will be appreciated by neo-Pagan readers. All of the original cast are included, with the addition of the author's special insight and sensitive treatment of the "gay angle". Not just a rewrite of the same old stock literary figures and synopsis, I fell in LOVE with Mordred, the person (not to mention the man he finds romantic passion with, but I won't give that away). The women in the story are healers, leaders, villains...passionate, fully-realised human portrayals of the characters we know from older works but now become believable as sisters, mothers, and priestesses in a world that humans can't always control or understand. One is often reminded that life is a mystery, there are no easy answers for any of us. Gay or straight, we all experience love and loss, pain and joy and ponder what it all means and why we're here at all. The author weaves these eternal themes skillfully into the narrative with generous doses of humour and occasionally profound sorrow.
We'll have to wait for the next book, in the meantime I'll read this one again, perhaps a few times.
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