(This review was originally posted by me on LibraryThing.com on May 28, 2009)
G. R. Grove is a self published author. I generally hesitate to pick up self-published books because of the lack of quality control. But no worries here. Grove is a competent writer who can take simple tale and make a colorful story out of it.
Storyteller is a tour of Wales in the time of Athurian legends. The Romans have left, Anglo-Saxons are advancing and King Arthur has been dead 20 years when the sixteen-year-old orphan Gwernin Kyuarwyd sets out on his first summer circuit of the Briton towns in modern Wales. He pays his way telling stories. Early in the book Gwernin and his traveling partner Ieuen wake up from midday nap in the middle of nowhere to find themselves in an opaque fog. Disaster. Slowly they try to find their way. Gwernin later, having gotten lost, makes his way to "a tall figure standing silent in the moon-silvered mist ahead of me." It turns out to be a massive black standing stone. Perched at the bottom he imagines he hears a legendary king of the Celtic "Other-world" on a hunt with his hounds.
"Distantly I saw the hunt come and pass, the wraith-like deer
and the white hounds gleaming in the darkness. Dimly I saw
the rider, gray-cloaked and gray-mounted, pass by, with his
followers streaming behind him and the moon striking sparks
of silver from their fittings and their horns. They came, and
passed like thunder, and dwindled into silence, and I was
alone with the moon, and the mist, and the coming dawn"
Instead of filling us with the blood and gore and passion we might expect with Athurian legends, Grove takes a more literary approach. She takes her time, keeping us entertained with Gwernin's travels; each chapter is another story out of Gwernin's travels. In the end she has created her version of 6th century Wales, infused with history and clashes of cultures, and a place where legends and stories mix with reality. This is the first of a trilogy. I look forward to the next book.
Note: On her LibraryThing.com profile Grove advertised that she was willing to provide a PDF copy of a book for a review. I took her up on the offer.
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