Stephen Lawhead added his own twists to Arthurian legend, in a Christianity-friendly, mythic-realism retelling of the years leading up to the tales of Arthur and his knights that we know and love. "Taliesin" takes place before the time of Merlin, starring Merlin's parents.
Charis is a pampered young princess of Atlantis, a seemingly idyllic civilization reminiscent of Greece. The only jarring note is a blind, seemingly mad prophet who predicts doom will soon fall upon Atlantis, and that the island will sink into the sea. Charis initially doesn't believe him, but upon the sudden, emotionally-scarring death of her mother, she leaves her family and becomes a bull dancer in honor of one of the Atlantean gods. (The scenes where she dances around and over the bull are breathtaking)
But a serious injury prompts her and her well-trained team to retire, and she returns home to find her father Avallach seriously ill, and married to his sly-eyed nurse. Charis now has a younger sister, Morgian, a creepy child heavily influenced by the family advisor, whose initially pleasant personality is sinking deeper into melancholy and darkness. And Charis begins to believe: Atlantis is going to sink.
Meanwhile, as Charis struggles on Atlantis, a famously unlucky young man in Britain finds a baby caught in a fishnet; he hails this as the beginning of his good luck. When he finds a disgraced wet-nurse for baby Taliesin, he falls in love and marries her; his luck continues. Taliesin grows to manhood, intelligent and wise -- and gifted with strange and wonderful powers.
Charis barely escapes Atlantis with her family, arriving on the strange shores of Britain. Though Taliesin's people are hospitable enough, Avallach, Charis and the other "children of Atlantis" are sadly out of place; refined and lovely, in a rough and cold land. Charis is embittered by her many struggles, believing neither in Taliesin's God or in the Atlantean gods. But after he meets her floating in a lake (thus gaining her the title of "Lady of the Lake") Taliesin falls in love with and eventually converts and marries Charis. Though their time together is far too short, they produce one of the greatest men in history...
I'm not entirely certain why it's okay to paganize Arthurian characters, as in "Mists of Avalon," but it's NOT okay to Christanize them. Why is it that when Christians are shown as better than pagans, it's "sugary" and untrue; but when non-Christians are shown as better than Christians, it's a bold statement and worthy of endless applause?
As for historical complaints: it's fiction, for crying out loud! No one knows the "real" story of Arthur, lost in the mists of time. We don't even know if he was a single person, or a collection of mythical and real kings mishmashed together. It's up to authors to interpret and reinterpret. Lawhead never pretends for a moment to be telling anything but a good story. We don't care if there are potatoes and fir trees. It doesn't wreck the book.
Writing style is good and descriptive, giving us accurate ideas of the light-filled, rotten-at-the-core Atlantis and the darker, simpler Britain. There is, aside from blood and death and extreme emotional intensity, nothing objectionable about this book in profanity and sex (none of either).
Charis is probably one of the best female fictional characters I've ever seen. She's strong and insightful, is willing to take matters into her own hands, and doesn't bow to anyone. It's through her resolve and courage that any people escaped from Atlantis; at the same time, she's afraid and embittered. It takes the sweet, relatively unspoiled Taliesin to break through her shell; Taliesin himself is taken from an old legend, and here reformatted into Merlin's father. Somehow we get more of Charis than Taliesin; though the scene where he brings Merlin back to life is simply breathtaking.
This is the start of a beautiful saga, written wonderfully and with great characters. Be sure to read it. Now, on to "Merlin."
