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Damosel: In Which The Lady Of The Lake Renders A Frank And Often Startling Account Of Her Wondrous Life And Times (2008)

by Stephanie Spinner(Favorite Author)

3.09 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0375936343 (ISBN13: 9780375936340)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Knopf Books for Young Readers

review 1: I thoroughly enjoyed this rendition of the tale of the lady who crafted and delivered Excalibur to Arthur. Actually, this is more Arthur's story, told in the snippets that would be privy to this "Lady" and a second surprise narrator. I love that the narrator's voices have the FEEL of the times. This is a quick and entertaining read and very true to the legends. I was hoping the person who buys the young adult books for my library would purchase it, but it came via interlibrary loan instead, which was good because then it went to the top of my burgeoning "to read" list. It's all good. :)P.S. My 15 year old daughter, who ONLY reads what engages her interest, is enjoying this book, too. She LOVES the Merlin t.v. series. Just saying.
review 2: Honestly, if ... morethis book hadn't been so short, I would have stopped reading it after the first twenty pages or so. Though I didn't, it took me a lot longer than it should have to read it, possibly because it was simply uninteresting. It tells the story of King Arthur from the point of view of the Lady of the Lake and a dwarf. Seems like a fine premise to me. Unfortunately, it does this in an incredibly boring way.The Lady of the Lake spends most of her time away from court, so she only learns about events later. The dwarf's parts are a bit better, but then only a bit. I think a major flaw is that there is nothing new that we learn about the story at all. Everything that occurs is exactly what happens in the general Arthur story, and at this point, if you're going to tell Arthur again, you need to do something different.Besides this, the diction is sometimes very informal or strange, to the point that it feels almost like a gimmick. The Lady frequently refers to "rules" that ladies of lakes have to follow, which is fine. Magic can have rules. But the rules are so bizarre (such as the rule of two and a half, where she has to follow the request of two and a half people, no matter what it is) that they don't seem quirky, as I think the point of them was, and just seem stupid.Finally, the villains were not fleshed out at all. In the Arthurian saga, this is one really easy thing to do to make the villains interesting. This didn't happen. We're told that Morgause and Morgan hate Arthur, but we're never told why. Then Mordred hates Arthur, too, simply because his mother told him to. All this might work, since the book is geared to a slightly younger YA audience (or at least felt that way), but it's all completely undermined at the end, when Morgan suddenly has a change of heart, becomes remorseful, and brings Arthur to Avalon. While in general I love Morgan's redemption, it was done so poorly here that even I didn't like it. There was no apparent reason for her sudden switch to the good side of things, and even the Lady says that it doesn't appear she's really changed at all.Potentially good (if somewhat cliché) premise; horribly executed. less

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