
E. C. Fisher has brought the Arthurian legend to life in a new and different way in the novel, Re: Camelot, The Complete Edition. Young Arthur is unaware he is a direct descendant of the great King Arthur of Camelot. After Arthur’s parents are killed in a car crash when he was just twelve, a miserable aunt sends Arthur off to a boarding school where he is lost and alone, his only solace the books and stories his mother used to read to him, so assiduously, of Camelot, the Knights of the Round Table, King Arthur and their adventures. Obsessed with everything Arthurian, Arthur wishes for nothing more than to be transported from his hell here to the days of legend, a legend he somehow feels intimately connected with. On the planet Avalon, trouble is brewing. The sleeping black dragon is awakening and about to spread its evil across all of the land that was once Camelot – unless, a young man can be summoned to save the world, a young man capable of drawing Excalibur from the stone, of reuniting all of the sacred weapons and defeating the evil that threatens to destroy Avalon. Could young Arthur be that man?
Re: Camelot, The Complete Edition is certainly a unique twist on the old Arthurian story. Author E. C. Fisher has created a whole new world in which Camelot once existed and although now fragmented, can be unified again by the right person. I loved the unique premise and it is not one I have found in my Arthurian readings to date. It is always difficult to take a legend such as Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, which has been so written about over the years and give it a new and fresh twist. Fisher does this well and the descriptions of the planet Avalon and its environment are well done. Arthur and indeed the main characters of the story, for me, were a little superficial and their treatment and characterization not in-depth enough for my liking. That may be a feature of the author’s desire to have such a large ensemble cast but nonetheless apart from Arthur we really did not get to know the other characters in any real depth. That being said, the story is one that rollicks along at some pace, with plenty of action and fight scenes in the narrative, along with some budding romances between the characters. I suspect this is squarely aimed at the young adult audience and the speed and unique qualities of the story will doubtless appeal to them. I did particularly like the lack of gender bias the author built into the story – automatic rights of accession regardless of gender and, of course, a female Merlin all go a long way to address the need to be gender equal in today’s world. Well done to the author for that.
