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A review by annamickreads
Half Sick of Shadows by Laura Sebastian
4.0
This book gives you a LOT of feelings to contend with!
In recent years, I've read a few Arthurian retellings, especially ones focusing on the characters of lore themselves. I think the challenge of writing about Arthur stems from the urge to tell the story when Arthur is an adult, when the characters have already learned their lessons and now stand as these figures on a pedestal in a very like stuffy sort of way. What I appreciate most about "Half Sick of Shadows" is that the characters are teenagers who are responsible for an entire kingdom — a kingdom on the brink of war that they have to take back from those who would do it harm.
The relationships between the characters are everything, and I especially love the deft way the author touches on the ever-changing relationships of Arthurian characters. As we all know, Lancelot in particular was MessyTM with his love life, and the yearning/pining/conflict with all the characters and their romantic entanglements really put me in my feelings.
However, I think the difficult part about this book was that it was constantly going back-and-forth in time, trying to account for all of Elaine's visions and filling in backstory to explain how things ended up the way they did. The melancholy of Elaine knowing inherently the way things would turn out (Morgana, her friend, turns evil, Lancelot betrays his best friend for his friend's wife...) and not being able to fix them seeped through the book in a way that was both touching and a little depressing.
I'm extremely fond of the sentence, "Believe me, if Gwen wanted to kill Arthur, she would have. That was merely...a cheeky hello" because warrior princess Guinevere is something I feel like needs to appear more often in Arthur retellings, the end.
In recent years, I've read a few Arthurian retellings, especially ones focusing on the characters of lore themselves. I think the challenge of writing about Arthur stems from the urge to tell the story when Arthur is an adult, when the characters have already learned their lessons and now stand as these figures on a pedestal in a very like stuffy sort of way. What I appreciate most about "Half Sick of Shadows" is that the characters are teenagers who are responsible for an entire kingdom — a kingdom on the brink of war that they have to take back from those who would do it harm.
The relationships between the characters are everything, and I especially love the deft way the author touches on the ever-changing relationships of Arthurian characters. As we all know, Lancelot in particular was MessyTM with his love life, and the yearning/pining/conflict with all the characters and their romantic entanglements really put me in my feelings.
However, I think the difficult part about this book was that it was constantly going back-and-forth in time, trying to account for all of Elaine's visions and filling in backstory to explain how things ended up the way they did. The melancholy of Elaine knowing inherently the way things would turn out (Morgana, her friend, turns evil, Lancelot betrays his best friend for his friend's wife...) and not being able to fix them seeped through the book in a way that was both touching and a little depressing.
I'm extremely fond of the sentence, "Believe me, if Gwen wanted to kill Arthur, she would have. That was merely...a cheeky hello" because warrior princess Guinevere is something I feel like needs to appear more often in Arthur retellings, the end.