The Forever King

Cochran and Murphy's ( Grandmaster ) new novel melds two plots, one taking place in Arthurian England, where the evil knight Saladin is trying to gain possession of the Holy Grail and make himself immortal, and the other set in the modern world, where the evil knight Saladin, now a mental patient, is again seeking the Grail and immortality. is trying to gain posses sion of the Holy Grail and thus become immortal. The Arthurian section is well written, with some clever new twists on familiar characters, especially Merlin and Nimue. Rather than echoing the conventional portrayal of Nimue as a scheming enchantress who bespells and traps Merlin, the authors depict her as a naive young waif who becomes the wizard's adopted daughter and helps him foil Saladin's plans. But the chapters set in modern times, where Arthur is reincarnated as a 10-year-old boy, are embarrassingly trite, with two-dimensional characters who spout dialogue that would be considered cliched in a made-for-TV movie. There is always room in the fantasy genre for a good new Arthurian novel. This, unfortunately, is not it. (July)