Hello everyone!
What news, huh?!?
LOL.
Anyway, a while back - and I think it was quite a while back - I picked up a retelling of the Arthurian legend and fell in love with it, for multiple reasons.
One, it felt much closer to what might have actually happened back in the day, in terms of realism and the fact that Arthur was not actually a medieval king riding around in full armour, and two, because it was a story in which he didn't want Guinevere, but her brother.
I mean COME ON.
I was hooked, but it took me a bit to return to the series, which is what I'm doing tonight as you can see. The Sons of Britain has six books overall so I play to go through all of them, slowly.
Tonight it's Bound by Blood's turn, the sequel one.
Links to related works and reviews can be found at the bottom of the page, as per usual!
Now to refresh our memory: our story starts by Arthur accidentally being the reason why Bedwyr loses his right hand, which then spools into Arthur helping the other man learn how to fight with just his left, and in the process the men become lovers.
Flash-forwad to a summer spent on patrol, they're finally returning home and might, FINALLY, have some private time which they can spend with just each other.
Joke's on them though because they keep being interrupted by literally everyone and their grandmother
On top of all that, Uthyr, their chief, gives Arthur and his brother Cai a challenge that should keep them occupied for a bit: how would they sort out patrols to keep the Saxons at bay?
Oh and also, they can't talk to anyone but their mentors for the next two weeks.
I mean it's like the universe itself is conspiring over here!
While Arthur's figuring all this out, Bed is having his own problems because at a point really close to the start of the story, he and Arthur are found by a woman named Elain who's come from the settlement Bed's father had just left, supposedly with some news he needed to hear. Why anyone would have sent a whore though is free to guess about (Elain says she's worked at a whore house), until it turns out - after she doesn't tell on either Bed or Arthur - that Bed's father had ulterior motives for all this.
See, Elain confesses to Bed that ... she's a transgender person. She feels female and presents as female, but she was born a man, so Bed's daddy-o thought hey, let's get Bed to fall for this person so they can get married and everyone will THINK his heir married a woman, but in reality he could have what he really wants.
Or some logic like that.
Bed doesn't quite know what to do with that, and he's got bigger problems anyway, because the two weeks for the challenge are up, and Arthur wins it. How?
He figures out that his chief doesn't really want strategy, he wants to see whether or not the men are loyal to him, so Arthur swears his loyalty and obeisance and brings forth the old sword of his departed grandfather, Marcus Roman, to the shock of everyone there because he needed to go into his grandfathers' tomb to get it (yes, two grandfathers; this runs in the family, and I'll have a review of THEIR story up soon too).
Naturally this causes a rift in his own house BUT it convinces the chief he's definitely loyal.
So to reward him, not only does he gift him his own house (which was the original reward anyway and Arthur was going to gift to Bed in turn), he also betroths him to his daughter Gwyn right on the spot.
THAT is a hitch nobody was expecting!
Bed has a solution though: he'll marry Elain while he's at it, the couples will live together in the big house, and conveniently enough Gwyn and Elain have a thing going too, so once the doors are locked and barred, no one will know who sleeps with who. Sounds great!
Except of course it doesn't play out that way. First, Bed's father demands proof that Arthur and Gwyn have consummated their marriage (not totally unheard of in those times, but you can see he's only doing it out of spite) and then things REALLY spiral because Cai - who was originally supposed to live with Arthur - is a colossal douche canoe and can't keep well enough alone.
Like a dog with a bone, he tries to barge in to find his brother, so of course he stumbles over Bed and Arthur together with how annoyingly gnat-y he is.
Then he runs to the chief because this is "unnatural" specifically spitting in Arthur's face telling him not to defile what their grandfathers had, or their two mentors have - which tells you all you need to know really in that Cai OBVIOUSLY thinks these four men were always just holding hands. And nothing else.
Anyway, this all unravels, Arthur's banished, Bed is chained up until his father releases him, saying he knew but that people aren't willing to accept change so he sends him after Arthur to make his own life, but what he doesn't count on is that Gwyn also hightails it out of there rather than wait to be married again, and Elain goes with her.
And with Bed and Arthur having shared a blood bond to swear an oath to one another, they're now on the road to a life that they, alone, will govern and be in command of - but they've left behind all they know and love (they have no idea about the women yet).
As far as I'm concerned, I'm waiting for a scene in which Arthur and Cai's parents rip him a new one - and the mentors too, among other people. The man DESERVES to have his hide tanned for what he pulls in this book and I will stand by this assessment no matter what anyone else says.
It was a really good continuation of the first book and the beginning of Arthur's Merry Band of Misfits aka Knights of the Round Table, though I will say it would have been nice if the guys weren't continuously interrupted. Like, give them ONE moment of peace please! But it was the point of the story so I'm not too mad about it.
I definitely will be if Cai doesn't get his due though, at some point, somewhere. His mother flew off the handle and attacked the chief, after all, got rip-shit-pissed over the sword business with Arthur, so if she DOESN'T box Cai's ears for him I'll be disappointed, considering his transgression is way, WAY bigger than anything anyone else has pulled in these books so far.
But anyway! That's where the story ends, and we'll check back with the men in the third in the series, Driven by Duty, which is supposed to be Gwyn and Elain's story, and I'm really looking forward to it.
So if you're into slightly different twists on King Arthur, check this out, for sure. It's as different as can be, the characters grip you and the writer's sense of style transports you to that particular time with ease. Definitely a good one for a rainy afternoon!
xx
*image not mine
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