Book Review: The Wicked Day

[osprey_archer]

littlerhymes and I have finished Mary Stewart's The Wicked Day! To my surprise, this was my favorite book of the quartet, because I got deeply invested in Mordred the lonely watchful child who would rather die than hurt Arthur, and also has to ride herd on all his horrible Orkney half-brothers.

(Side note about the Orkney boys: Gareth is, as usual, the sweetheart of the gang. Indeed, Stewart notes that as long as he stayed on Orkney, where he was his mother's pet, he was "in danger of effeminacy" - which is perhaps why he escapes the toxic masculinity that destroys the rest of them. Usually Gawain is the second-best Orkney boy, but here he's just as vengeful and hotheaded as Gaheris and Agrivaine. Sometimes you see a decent Gaheris, but no one in the entire world of Arthurian adaptations seems to like Agrivaine.)

Unfortunately, the book falls apart in the third section, I think because Stewart also got invested in Mordred, Basically a Good Kid Which Is Impressive Considering His Life. Her heart is not in Mordred's destruction of Camelot, but unfortunately she's written herself in a corner where she has to write it, as in the Merlin trilogy she firmly established a) Merlin's prophecy that Mordred would destroy Arthur, and b) Merlin's infallibility as a prophet.

She tries to soften the blow: Mordred's final confrontation with Arthur takes place as a result of a series of misunderstandings. Mordred is Arthur's heir, so when he hears that Arthur is dead he naturally takes over the kingdom, but Arthur is not dead, and when he comes back to England a storm forces him to land on Saxon ground... which leads to a battle with the Saxons, with whom Mordred unfortunately just made an alliance... which ends with Mordred and Arthur facing off in battle.

And then they have a final parlay, which Stewart doesn't show us (they died right after! no one knows what they said! YOU COULD TELL US ANYWAY), and reach an agreement... and then an adder bites a knight and the knight draws his sword to kill it and the soldiers take that as a sign for battle to begin and THAT IS THAT.

In the afterword she notes that the only historical information we have about Mordred is that he died at Camlann with Arthur, in a context where he might just as easily have been fighting on Arthur's side as against him, and she might have followed that route if she hadn't locked herself with all those prophecies. I think the book would have been stronger for it if she had - or else if she had Mordred betray Arthur at least a little. It feels too easy, too much letting the characters off the hook, for it to all be just a misunderstanding.

***

Also I am 99% convinced that Elizabeth Wein read this book to absolute shreds when she was young, because her Medraut so feels like a darkfic version of Stewart's (in particular, an expansion of the scene where Morgause kisses Mordred, when he is not yet aware that he's her son but she definitely knows. How did you expect that to pan out, Morgause! Did you assume he would never know!), and also a fix-it where Medraut doesn't cause the fall of Camelot after all - although Camelot still falls.

Comments

[sovay]

To my surprise, this was my favorite book of the quartet, because I got deeply invested in Mordred the lonely watchful child who would rather die than hurt Arthur, and also has to ride herd on all his horrible Orkney half-brothers.

I think you have mistyped The Last Enchantment for The Wicked Day, which is fine because The Wicked Day is a more interesting novel. It's one of Renault's very few third-person narratives, too.

In the afterword she notes that the only historical information we have about Mordred is that he died at Camlann with Arthur, in a context where he might just as easily have been fighting on Arthur's side as against him, and she might have followed that route if she hadn't locked herself with all those prophecies.

This is the thing I really wish she had done with the novel, even if she had to retcon herself. Prophecies always come true on the slant, anyway.

(I am structurally fine with her choice to make the tragedy of Camelot a devastating misunderstanding, I just don't find this novel's particular take to carry the necessary inevitable horror: it doesn't convince me there was never any other way out.)

[osprey_archer]

*facepalm* Yes, you're right. Fascinating that I managed to get it wrong in both the post title AND the body of the post.

I wonder if it would have worked better for me if we had seen Mordred and Arthur's final conversation? Or if she hadn't tried to cram so much material into the last section? (But I can also see her not wanting to follow up the Merlin Trilogy with a whole entire Mordred trilogy. One book or bust!) It doesn't undercut the characterization in the earlier parts so at least it doesn't spoil the good parts of the book, but it does mean that the quartet goes out with a whimper instead of a bang.

[sovay]

Or if she hadn't tried to cram so much material into the last section?

That couldn't have hurt. Especially considering the leisurely childhood opening, the breakneck of the tragedy is pretty zero-to-KABOOM. The stuff with Guenivere is also really interesting, but just barely sketched.

the quartet goes out with a whimper instead of a bang.

I'll try to find the interview with her where she explained that she didn't mean to write an Arthurian quartet, The Crystal Cave was supposed to be a standalone, but then she just kept thinking about the stories.

[brigid]

I mean, I would have been very fine with a Mordred trilogy. Me, right here. I would have loved that. Where is my alternate universe where that exists?

I imprinted HARD on these books as a kid, I read the first one about a million times.

[osprey_archer]

We the readers would have loved a Mordred trilogy! But perhaps Stewart felt that she was simply done with Arthuriana.