false3011688037593634397803759363404319Damosel: In Which the Lady of the Lake Renders a Frank and Often Startling Account of her Wondrous Life and Times
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3011688.Damosel_In_Which_the_Lady_of_the_Lake_Renders_a_Frank_and_Often_Startling_Account_of_her_Wondrous_Life_and_Times
8238Stephanie Spinner2967820falseThu Apr 09 00:00:00 -0700 2009Thu Apr 09 12:54:11 -0700 2009Thu Apr 09 13:02:00 -0700 2009 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.