| The Doom of Camelot | |||||||||
| edited by James Lowder | |||||||||
| Green Knight Publishing, 312 pages | |||||||||
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A review by Georges T. Dodds
A modern collection which targets a specific question in Arthurian lore is interesting in that, unlike most of the
original source material, the particular question is at the forefront, not buried amongst a number of side-tracks and
peripheral events and characters which only an Arthurian scholar can really sift through to reach the kernel of the
matter. Some 20 years ago, I read a dozen or so of the major Arthurian source texts, but eventually I got somewhat bored of the
seeming lack of focus (at least from a layman's point of view) of the narrative style of these texts. The many
events/forces leading to the demise of Camelot proposed in this book actually allowed me to see many of the larger
themes of my previous readings and how they all fit together into a cohesive story.
Some stories come in the form of recollections of the major participants. In "A Hermit's Tale" by Catherine Wells,
an aging knight turned hermit recounts the rise and fall of a historical (rather than romance) Arthur; in "The Realm
of the Dead and the Dreaming" by Phyllis Ann Karr, a post-mortem debriefing occurs between the "shades" of the principal
participants; while in "Avilion: A Romance of Voices" by Verlyn Flieger, everybody involved gets to voice their
opinions and outline their manipulation of the whole situation. Other stories (Cherith Baldry's "In the Forest
Perilous") present presages of Arthur's doom, while another ("The Shadow of a Sword" by Ed Greenwood) shows a
later king, Constantine, searching the past for the secret of Arthur's glory.
Similar to the theme of Clemence Housman's excellent novel The Life of Sir Aglovale de Galis (recently
reprinted by Green Knight Press) where the fall of Camelot is squarely placed on the seamy and sinful undercurrents
masked by a facade of apparent lily-white righteousness that follows a charismatic leader, several stories such as
Mike Ashley's "The Corruption of Perfection" present this same hypothesis. Along these lines, Phyllis Ann Karr's
poem "The Last Idle of the King" suggests that while all might have been fine when Arthur brought together his
knights and fought off the Saxons, once peace was established and an impossible quest for the Grail had left
the knights disappointed and glum (this latter idea also crops up in Douglas W. Clark's "The Knight Who Wasn't
There"), idle and bored -- infighting, plots and treason were not far behind.
However, not everything in The Doom of Camelot is all gloom and doom... Phyllis Ann Karr's "The Last
Idle of the King" is certainly a humorous piece. Even more humorous, is the suggestion in Douglas W. Clark's
"The Knight Who Wasn't There" that Mordred, created to cheer up a glum complement of knights at a post
Grail-quest feast of the Pentecost, was simply a fictitious scape-goat whose existence was so emotionally and
politically convenient that he blossomed into an undebunkable demon.
A nice cover by Marc Fishman in the pre-Raphaelite style and short but informative author blurbs at the
end of the book make even the book's trimmings pleasing. Certainly for fans of Arthurian lore, The Doom
of Camelot is a worthwhile read, and while it might not be suited for the entirely unversed reader,
the writing is solid and sufficiently varied as to appeal to many readers.
Georges Dodds is a research scientist in vegetable crop physiology, who for close to 25 years has
read and collected close to 2000 titles of predominantly pre-1950 science-fiction and fantasy, both
in English and French. He writes columns on early imaginative literature for WARP,
the newsletter/fanzine of the
Montreal Science Fiction and Fantasy Association
and maintains a site reflecting his tastes in imaginative literature.
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Mike Ashley, "The Corruption of Perfection"
 
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