Beloved Exile

Thomas Malory had the good sense to pack Guenevere off to a nunnery on the death of Arthur. Here, on the other hand, Godwin revs her up for a shot at the succession - an intriguing idea that gets lost amid pulpy prose and potted history. His Guenevere is something like Elizabeth I in the wrong century, a cynical old ruffian fully capable of taking over where Arthur left off in trying to hold together the battered remains of a Roman-modeled British (i.e., Celtic) authority in Britain. The Brits, however, are doomed both by their own rivalries and by the advancing Saxon tide. Royally betrayed by one of her own while staving off the troops of the pretender Constantine, Guenevere walks straight into a crew of Saxon slave traders and spends the next ten years as "Gwenda," loyal slave to sturdy farmer Gunnar Eanboldson and his iron-tough mother, Elgifu. Thus, by the time they grant her freedom, Guenevere has become one of the family, chastened by adversity and thoroughly tutored in such un-British attitudes as love of the soil and respect for equality before the law. And though there's not much to be salvaged of the British cause at this late date, Guenevere - secure in her hopes for a future "England" under the likes of Gunnar - heads cheerfully enough off to exile in Byzantium, there (armed with Saxon insights) to assist the Emperor Justinian in the preparation of his Code. Unfortunately, Godwin has neither the encyclopedic knowledge nor the imaginative grasp of semi-barbarian societies needed to bring off this ambitious design. HIS narrative is often clumsy or anachronistic - with characters who "snort in terminal disgust," legal-minded Saxons who debate the prerogatives of berserkers in Masterpiece Theater accents. So, like the crude Firelord (1980), this sequel (second in a trilogy) is a labored addition to Arthuriana, its occasional fetching moments swamped by overall shallowness and sloppiness. (Kirkus Reviews)