False Apron Strings

The Pendragon Legend

I am really disappointed in this series. Not because of the story, but because of everything else. The story is a great sword and sorcery tale, but it's riding on the coattails of a great name and a great legend. I'm certain all sales were attributed to that name and that timeless legend. Change all the names and change the titles, and it would be great on its own. The way it is, it is frustrating and disappointing. Of course, there are other issues, but I'm just talking about the story here. 

Aside from all the Pendragon names that have next to no connection with the legend, the books are each uncomfortably short. I looked up the first three books on Amazon and they were all less than 150 pages. So, ten books, three to four books combined into one, would make a very nice trilogy.

The next issue is what can happen when all you do to spellcheck is look for those nice little squiggly red lines in your document. There are LOTS of mistakes - repeated groups of words, words where one letter didn't make it, but it still made a word, words missing altogether. I can't help but think that there must have been a plethora of green squiggly lines, but I'm not that good an editor. 

The worst diversion from the legend was about the sword. According to people in this book, the great Excaliber was used once before to unify the country, but then that king went power-nuts and the sword had to be taken away from him. The unity all fell apart because none of the lords were willing to hand that sword over to one of them, so they reforged it into sixteen different swords to be held in trust until someone else worthy of it showed up. Enter Arthur. 

Arthur is running all over trying to get the different lords to commit enough troops to the cause of running off the Huns before they level the entire country. Most of those lords want to run away - understandable considering the devastation the Huns were leaving in their wake. But eventually, they see the light and he manages to gather enough of the lords together to agree that he is the one. Not something he wants, but whatever. He just wants to defeat the evil enemy and get on with a peaceful life, maybe marry the girl he's fallen in love with, which isn't Guinevere. Since these guys agree to pass the 'Sword' on to Arthur, they gather all sixteen of those swords together and reforge Excalibur. When they said that the finished product - which apparently took only a few hours (red flag) - They decided to see who could lift it. NONE of them could, not even Arthur. Out of curiosity, I made a few inquiries and did some math. A swordsmith told me that the average one-handed sword weighs between 1000 to 1100 grams, and google tells me that equals roughly two and one-third pounds. That, times 16 equals almost 37 pounds. Now I would certainly hate the thought of swinging around a 30+ pound sword, but most assuredly anyone would have been able to lift it, especially since it had just come off the forge and was just resting there, not embedded in some stone.

In a further digression from the legend, it was the Norse queen who killed Atilla the Hunn and she was aided in this hunt by Guenevere who was magical enough to be influential in the remaking of Excaliber as well as shapeshifting into a dragon. The queen rode her to Atilla's 'final resting place.'

Just before I'd finished the books I had, I learned there was another book in this series, but I'm not going to buy it so I can't tell you if there ever is a round table or not. 

This book just diverged way too much for me. 

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