Spear, by Nicola Griffith

[sophia_sol]

A novella about the Matter of Britain, featuring Percival the Grail Knight as a young woman. Griffith's prose is beautiful, and she's doing some interesting things with this interpretation, and I found the beginning of the book compelling, but ultimately....idk, I finished the book feeling oddly dissatisfied. I'm not sure what I wanted done differently, I'm not sure what wasn't working for me.

Maybe it's that I don't feel like I got a good enough sense of why being one of the Companions of King Arthur was what she wanted, why it met her goals in life and what she was looking to be able to do? And although I loved the early stuff about her relationship with Nimuë, with the immediate unsettling magical brain-connection thing, I don't feel like I saw enough of why it was a thing that was able to just...settle into an unfraught ending together.

The ending isn't uncomplicatedly happy – her mother is dead, the Arthur/Guinivere/Lancelot triad is unable to produce an heir to the throne, the influence of the sword on Arthur is problems. But I still don't feel like the happy parts actually felt earned.

Dangit I wanted to like this book!!

Comments

[brownbetty]

Have you read Jo Walton's book on the same subject? It's not very queer, but is interesting

[sophia_sol]

Is that The King's Peace and sequels? I haven't got round to it, no - I like Jo Walton a lot as a poet and as a book reviewer, and I like a lot of the things she's trying to do with her books, but I find her a bit inconsistent about endings and so I haven't put a lot of effort into reading all her novels. How are the endings of these ones?

[brownbetty]

IDK, the ending isn't IMHO the main problem, the main problem is that it opens with a rape, and the story flows from that, so like. You're excluding a big amount of readership.

I seem to remember it ended okay, but it's been a bit. It feels more "biographical" than story-shaped, so I think I wasn't expecting the ending to be necessarily that tidy.

[sophia_sol]

Hmmm, I get you, and honestly I don't particularly want to read a rape narrative myself, unfortunately.

[brownbetty]

Fair exclamation point. I mention it because I definitely want people to know this in case my discussion gets them interested exclamation point

[oracne]

I'm looking forward to this one - I am imagining it as a Myth for Now, but have no idea if that's what it actually is.

[sophia_sol]

yeah I think it could fill that role! I hope you enjoy it!

[sholio]

Yeah, Griffith's endings are often misses for me. Her books tend to have setups I really love, characters I really enjoy, and then not quite go where I want them to. But her writing is really lovely and I keep trying!

[sophia_sol]

yeah, the only other Griffith book I've read is Hild, which I adored.......right up to the ending, which I emphatically did not jive with. I'm sorry to hear that it's part of a bigger trend for her!

[sholio]

Haha, yeah, both Hild and Ammonite were like that for me, although in both cases the parts I liked were vivid and strong enough to override the disappointing ending. And I will probably read the Hild sequel, but with generally lowered expectations.

[chestnut_pod]

I felt much the same way. It met and exceeded my baseline expectations for "good," but it didn't really do much else.

[sophia_sol]

yeah, that about sums it up!