OH ELIZABETH WEIN

[cahn]

I first read The Winter Prince yeeears ago because sarahtales told me about it, and I loved it, and I crashed hard on Coalition of Lions.* (I blame sarahtales for not warning me!) But I really wanted to reread all the books in this series because Code Name Verity was so awesome, and I'm now going through all five of them. The first three:

The Winter Prince (reread) - 4/5. I had completely forgotten about this book before rereading it except for one detail which does not actually show up in this book at all.* And this book about Medraut (Mordred), King Arthur's son, is totally and completely awesome. Can we say intense?

* I will now do all of you a huge favor and tell you that there are NO SEQUELS to this book and under NO CONDITION should you read A Coalition of Lions right after reading this one. (Although you should read it, and the other books in the series too, because they're really good, just not right after this one.) Yes, it says it is a sequel. It is not. It takes place in an alternate universe that happens to be very similar to but IS NOT THIS ONE. DARN IT. THIS IS MY POSITION AND I'M STICKING TO IT.

A Coalition of Lions - 3+/5. This is not a reread, because the first time I tried, I gave up on it about two chapters through because OH MEDRAUT. Because, as I mentioned, NOT A SEQUEL to Winter Prince. Except, you know, that it has the same characters and backstory and stuff. And Goewin's the POV character, which is totally cool.

Anyway, the second time through I knew the punchline of the first chapter (hint: remember what actually happened in Arthurian myth?) and it allowed me to get through without dropping the book in despair. And it's a really good book! I JUST. OH MEDRAUT.

The Sunbird - 3+/5. This one's from the POV of Telemakos. OH TELEMAKOS. Are you sensing a theme?

Stay tuned for the other two books in the Telemakos series. I have a feeling that there will be more OH TELEMAKOS to come.

Comments

[cahn]

Heh. Did you read Coalition right after Prince? Because it just killed me to do that (well, what I mean by that is, it killed my reading of Coalition and I didn't come back to it until five years later) because all that painful growth Medraut goes through, all the realizations he claws himself towards -- all for nothing! I could not deal! You are clearly tougher than I am :) (I suspect actually the operative part is that you are more of an analytical reader than I am, but same effect :) )

[thistleingrey]

I did! I think it's partly that I came to Prince with a sort of comprehensive sense of the Arthuriana being bent (from the ninth century on, heh), but yeah, it's very hard.