Kevin Crossley-Holland

[Insidious Rex]

Anyone else familiar with his work? He is an English linguist and translator and academician who writes poetry and fairy tales and childrens literature on the side (sound familiar??). He is an expert historian on all things Anglo Saxon and medieval and he weaves his particular expertiese into several books he's written. I recently finished reading his Arthur Trilogy (and accompanying Gatty's Tale) which I found quite riveting for the most part. If you are at all into Arthurian literature and also like Tolkien and/or Rowling I think you would find these works quite entertaining. I burned through all four in just a matter of months which I generally dont do.

The story is about a young page named Arthur whose life more or less parallels the life of the Arthur in the Arthurian legends. You follow along his daily life in his medieval (12th/13th century) manor settlement somewhere deep in the "Middle March" between old Wales and christian England. And an ongoing theme is his existence between legend and reality, just like the legendary Arthur.

Its clearly influenced by TH White since much of it is about the young Arthur striving impatiently as a misfit youth to be knight-like, thirsting for knowledge and understanding, and finally achieving manhood and honor (it even has Merlin in it!). But its drenched in real history and detail about the age (almost overwhelmingly at times! But nothing that a true Tolkien fanatic cant handle. Like Tolkien, he also gives us indexes so we can understand strange words that went out of favor over 700 years ago. And glossaries of names and a number of maps) and we get to follow him along all the way to the Crusades and finally back to his home while we get to see along with him the reinterpreted legends of King Arthur and his many quests and romances re-spun in interesting form that make it clear his expertise in the area.

Anyway, I highly recommend it. The four books are titled:

The Seeing Stone (2000)
At the Crossing-Places (2001)
King of the Middle March (2003)

and a spin off novel about the adventures of a secondary character is called Gatty's Tale (2006) which I would also recommend as it dovetails quite well with the trilogy (and Gatty is the one character you REALLY want to know more about from the original novels).