The strong conclusion to King's fantasy trilogy recasting Arthurian myth (after Mad Merlin and Lancelot Du Lethe) tells the story of Morgan le Fey, Arthur's half-sister, onetime lover and sworn enemy. As a six-year-old, Morgan watched as her father prepared to fight Uther, the man who would slay him, marry her mother and provide her with her half-brother Arthur. And she had the vision that would motivate her every action from that day forward: Arthur as the antlered boy, the son of war, whom she must oppose if Britannia is ever to know peace. More than anything else—the deft writing, the astounding battles or the intellectual thrill of relating King's unique slant on Arthurian legend to other writers' versions—it is that vision that makes this novel special. Morgan becomes and remains a sympathetic figure, no matter how atrocious her actions. Whatever damage she wreaks in the battle for Camelot, there remains in her something of the precious and precocious young girl who had an ecstatic vision of a beauty so great, and a future so dire, that she must do whatever was in her power to midwife the one while preventing the other. (Sept. 10)
