The Child of the Holy Grail

July 16, 2001
The third and final installment in Miles's feminist-inflected Guenevere trilogy set in Camelot boasts characters whose practice to deceive creates a tangled web indeed. Queen Guenevere is poised to be the good-hearted, long-suffering heroine, but she is more like a star-crossed black widow spider. Her beauty entraps both King Arthur and her knight, Sir Lancelot; once bitten, they are doomed to betray and be betrayed by Guenevere. Long ago, King Arthur fathered a son, Mordred, with his witch sister, Morgan Le Fay. After he and Guenevere reunite, an angry Morgan sends an adult Mordred to his father's court to gain admittance to the Knights of the Round Table and steal the crown from his aging father. As he is a living symbol of the affair, Guenevere is understandably cold toward Arthur's son, and finds comfort in cuckolding her husband with Lancelot. But even her most trusted knight is not without sin. Years ago, while escorting the sacred Hallows of the Goddess, or Holy Grail, Lancelot spent a night at the creepy Castle Corbenic. His hosts, the evil King Pelles, the king's beautiful, abused daughter Elaine, and the odd, elderly Dame Brisein, seemed all too eager for his company. When a new knight, 12-year-old Galahad, arrives to rival Mordred for a seat at the Round Table, Lancelot has a lot of explaining to do. Predictable melodrama and an overlarge cast of characters mar the tale, but fans of the series will yearn to know Guenevere and Camelot's fate. (July)Forecast:As the last volume in a popular trilogy, this book will be eagerly awaited, advertised by a teaser chapter in the paperback edition of
The Knight of the Sacred Lake and by a colorful jacket matching those of the previous two volumes.