King Arthur, reimagined
What if gentility were taken out of the famous story?
By Force Alone
Lavie Tidhar Tor Books
There are no parfit gentil knights in Lavie Tidhar's Arthurian epic fantasy By Force Alone.
It is a vicious, beautiful, profane and wickedly funny reimagining of the rise and fall of King Arthur without the chivalry, divine right or holy quests. No one is pure of heart, no one is destined by God to rule: The right of kings is determined solely by the might of kings. Arthur begins his career in a world that has moved on, a Londinium rebuilding itself from the wreck of Roman retreat, by establishing himself as a precocious gang leader and cornering the drug market — the sword in the stone is a publicity stunt. Guinevere — so far from the shy and delicate “white shadow” of Rosemary Sutcliff or Roger Lancelyn Green — leads her own all-female mercenary band, hired to take out King Pelles. Lancelot is a Judean assassin who studied kung fu under martial-arts master Joseph of Arimathea. Galahad runs a brothel. Merlin, inhuman and cynical, is only in it for the power.
Tidhar is playing what-if with the legend: What if these people were just people, rather than long shadows thrown across invented history? What if King Arthur were not High King because he was chosen by destiny so much as that he fought for it and won? What if women were not just abstract objects to possess, but people with their own agency and motive force and career goals? What if the Grail were not a holy Christian relic but something entirely different, with its own compelling and corrupting power?
This kind of retelling offers a wealth of opportunity to examine aspects of the familiar story in a new light, and is both exciting and satisfying to read. It reminds me of Katherine Addison's recently released The Angel of the Crows in the level of creative insight and detail involved in the reimagination of a well-known narrative. Of particular interest is the way Tidhar flips Arthur and Merlin on the moral axis: His Merlin is manipulative, parasitic, using both Uther and Arthur to get what he wants, drumming up xenophobic hatred among the locals to support Arthur's cause, while Arthur is a murderous gang leader who will stop at nothing to achieve his goals. Despite the complete break with the original version, their relationship still works: king to trusted magical adviser.
The prose style is half of what makes the book so powerful. Tidhar is both clean and poetic, sparse but evocative. The profanity serves its purpose. He switches between point-ofview characters and authorial voice seamlessly, using short, almost choppy sentences to give a sense of events lensing into one another.
The references to Greek philosophy in the narration both underline the post-roman intellectual landscape of the time and create distance between the reader and the text. This story sweeps us along with it.