The Grail War

Oh boy. Where to begin?

The blurb describes this middle book of Monaco's pseudo-Arthurian trilogy as “stirring and beautifully moving....in the classic fantasy tradition of The Lord of The Rings.”. Not sure which book they read to think that, but it certainly wasn't this one!

It opens ten years after the events of Parsival, the first book (which I actually liked), with the land being pelted by endless rain. This sets the tone for a bleak, oppressive novel where everything is dark, bleak and covered in shit. This is gruesome stuff.

For some reason the supposedly dead evil wizard Clinschor, from the first novel, is back, this time recruiting Parsival's arrogant arsehole of a son, Lohengrin and his plan appears to be to utterly destroy Britain as a “warning to the world” as he tries to find The Grail.

Ah yes, The Grail. We're never told what it is, or why so many people want it. Parsival himself has returned to the world after years in holy orders, and is generally a bit of a wet blanket, not even really being affected by the murder of his wife and daughter. His old companion Broaditch sets off to seek the Grail for reasons that are never convincing. Perhaps there was some attempt to create a parallel between low born and high born, but I don't know.

God this book was a slog. Two thirds through I nearly gave up, but ploughed through to the end, amid rivers of dead, blighted countryside, raging wildfires, storms, battles, blood, guts and gore. The Lord of The Rings this is not.

I'm in two minds as to whether to finish the trilogy. At the end, after a climactic battle where Clinschor wasn't even killed and what was possibly the Grail fell into Broaditch's possession, Parsival decides to seek his son. Broaditch returns to his family and Britain is still without a king (fleeting appearances by Morgan LaFey and Modred add nothing). Can you call a book turgid? This was turgid.

Monaco can write good prose, but this meandering, unfocused novel was a bit of a mess.