Book Review: Mordred

I picked up "Mordred" by Nancy Springer at a library sale. I'm glad I didn't pay for it. That's all the review you really need, but I'll go on.

Mordred is the son that King Arthur had with the sister he didn't know about. He's also the guy who delivers the near fatal blow to Arthur in the big blowout that wipes out pretty much everyone associated with Camelot. This book intrigued me because it's supposed to tell his side of the story. And it does. It's just not very interesting or engaging.

It tells of Merlin's prophecy of how Mordred would kill Arthur, how Mordred was found in a basket in a river and raised for several years by a fisherman and his wife, was discovered and brought to be raised by a rebel king, became a knight of the Round Table, spent his life fighting the assumption that he's evil because he was born of incest, sought the word "son" from Arthur, and tried to battle against what everyone said was his fate.

The book ends rather suddenly when Mordred gives his soul to the one person he trusts, King Arthur, so that he can stop feeling the pain of his life and just accept that he must one day kill Arthur.

It has promise as a story. If they make a Camelot TV series with several seasons to work with it might be worth an episode or two. But this author was not the one to tell this story.