The Chessboard Queen [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

I was disappointed with this novel, which I expected to be "a beautiful rendering of the world's most timeless romance," as the cover advertises. Aside from Arthur and Gawain, few characters are likeable or well-drawn. The characters themselves seem to spend most of the novel being exasperated with one another. Merlin is not wise or admirable, just hypocritical in his hostility to Guinevere for her selfishness. As for her, why would any reader be captivated by a spoiled, conventionally gorgeous airhead with a phobia of blood? Or a bunch of shallow relationships, few of which make much emotional sense? Readers find two things compelling: mystery and struggle. We would love to see truly deep female character wrestle with jealousy or, say, conflicted love for two men. This element is what keeps many readers absorbed in, and called back several times to, Bradley's The Mists of Avalon. Unfortunately in The Chessboard Queen what we get is a couple of whiners (Elaine was one too) complaining about their lives and inexplicably drawn to a ridiculous caricature of knighthood, the rather stupid Lancelot character. The only struggle here was the reader's, to try not to skip too many chapters. Not astoundingly well-written, or vivid, and with few if any memorable scenes (to be fair, transport and viewing of the Round Table were pretty effective). As a period piece, pretty superficial. But it passes the time, I guess. END

While the first book in the series is alright, I just didn't like this one at all. This one begins close to where the first one left off, Guinevere is just as annoying as ever, but this time we get to see her whine about how unfullfiling her marriage to Arthur is. I don't see how she could feel that way since Arthur is such a great guy, in fact my two favorite men in the series are a tie between Arthur and Gawain. We also get an introduction to Lancelot, who is probably the worst character in the series which is saying a lot since we had to go through Guinevere and the unicorn thing. Lancelot was found by the Lady of the Lake when he was a baby in the arms of his mother, so the Lady of the Lake takes baby Lancelot from his mother so she could raise him just because she was bored. Once back at the lake the Lady of the Lake gets this very Christian woman to act as Lancelot's wet nurse. Because of that Lancelot because a Christian fanatic who tries to crucify himself, I am a very strong Christian and even this left me cringing. So now that even having a child of her own has left her bored, the Lady of the Lake sends Lancelot to Camelot in outdated armor telling him to become a knight. Once there we are subjected to how awesome Lancelot is as we see beat Arthur's knights one by one without getting tired, I have a hard time believeing this because Arthur's knights are supposed to be the best of the best, and while Lancelot is supposed to be very good, I don't think that he is that good. At first we are sujected to Guinevere hating Lancelot for no reason at all, then that hate slowly turns into love because the unicorn gave Lancelot Guinevere's love for him before he died, no wonder I hated the unicorn he supports adultry. I have never liked the love story between Lancelot and Guinevere because it glorifies adultry (I prefer the original legend where Guinevere is faithful to Arthur), but this makes the story ten times worse. At the end of the story feel disgusted towards Lancelot and Guinevere, and I feel sorry for Arthur.

Newman did a little better with this second part of her trilogy than she did with the first book. While the writing is still very simplistic and many characters remain undeveloped, I found a bit of interest in the subcharacters. Guinevere continues to be a self-absorbed dimwit but at least the unicorn is finally gone. How in the world the unicorn gave it's love of Guinevere to Lancelot is still a mystery to me. It seemed to be nothing more than Newman's weak effort to get rid of the unicorn character - for which I was grateful. Let's see - there are so many silly points...Lancelot goes insane because Guinevere has suffered a flashback of post tramatic stress disorder involving her long dead nurse Flora. However, we had no idea that the Flora episode ever bothered Guinevere in the first place. Luckily Lancelot is saved by the Lady of the Lake and then suddenly gives up his efforts to find his birth mother. Guinevere's brother who returned from "the dead" vanishes from the story opting to live in the wilderness where he has no contact with the rest of Britian...or with the author apparently because she completely forgets about those poor people living in the wilderness. Sound scattered? Sound childish? IT IS! However, Arthur's character was somewhat interesting. It kept me ready....I'm not quite sure why.