Gwenhwyfar

by Mercedes Lackey

Reviewed by Coral

The third daughter of King LLeudd, Gwenhwyfar turns away from a life learning Power with the Ladies and instead devotes herself to warrior training, wanting nothing more than to be her father’s war chief. But as the Saxons continue their push forward against an heirless High King Arthur, Gwenhwyfar finds herself in a position she didn’t expect: wife and queen.

For a book that was supposed to be about King Arthur’s Queen Gwenhwyfar, she spent very little time as his actual queen. I think it was something like 30 out of 400 pages. While I enjoyed reading her story, I wish there had been more Arthur and his Companions involved in the story. Most of the times we were only getting information about the court as people came to visit Gwenhwyfar’s father, so it felt like we were excluded from a large part of the story.

I’ve mentioned it before, but I tend to like my Arthurian legend books a little less magical than most. For the most part, I thought it was handled well, but I didn’t really like the Fae being actual magical characters.

I thought the author did a good job with the religion at the time, actually mentioning goddesses like Epona and Morrigan.

I liked how she used the different elements of the Arthurian legend in her story, some of them in ways I hadn’t seen before.

All in all, I wish the book had been longer, or told from different viewpoints, so it didn’t feel like I was missing a big chunk of the story.

Grade: C