{"id":1319,"date":"2015-05-22T11:38:32","date_gmt":"2015-05-22T18:38:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/?p=1319"},"modified":"2017-12-18T08:32:13","modified_gmt":"2017-12-18T16:32:13","slug":"review-arthur-rex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/2015\/05\/22\/review-arthur-rex\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Arthur Rex"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Arthur<\/a>
\n Arthur Rex<\/a> by Thomas Berger<\/a>
\n My rating: 5 of 5 stars<\/a><\/p>\n

I came across Arthur Rex<\/i> twenty seven years ago, in my high school library. That day I discovered two things: the joy of browsing stacks and finding random gems, and the joy of reading Thomas Berger.<\/p>\n

Arthur Rex<\/i> was like no other book I\u2019d ever read, (nor was it like any other Berger wrote, I\u2019d come to find). Seemingly gussied up with thees and thous, it was nevertheless easy to read. Such a matter-of-fact style. And that whole \u201cshow, don\u2019t tell\u201d rule? Annihilated.<\/p>\n

Berger sticks to the Arthurian romance most of us already know, and gets us through the big stories: Arthur\u2019s accidental fathering of Mordred, Tristram and Isolde, Guinivere and Lancelot, Gawaine and the Green Knight, to name a few. But in the finer details, Berger maintains a consistency that would be otherwise missing if this was just a gathering of the old stories. Gawaine, for example, when tested by temptation before he faces the Green Knight, speaks no ill of women (unlike the \u201cPearl Poet version) when he realizes the nature of the Green Knight’s game. In this way, Berger takes the traditional definition of \u201cromance\u201d and updates it to mean what it meant all along: novel.<\/p>\n

I decided to reread Arthur thanks to being able to get it \u201cfree\u201d on my e-reader via Kindle Unlimited, and I found myself reading it on all of my devices that support the Kindle App. On my tablet before bed, on my PC at work, on my phone waiting in the doctor\u2019s office. Berger\u2019s prose style for Arthur Rex<\/i> is that easy to fall into. It really does feel like you\u2019re being told a story by your old grandpa. The Princess Bride treatment of The Round Table.<\/p>\n

Lovers of the King Arthur stories should read this book, as it stands up against any other telling, including Mallory, White, and Pyle. Lovers of Thomas Berger should read this book, as it shows how his subtle hand can nevertheless create a deep and rich tapestry. Lovers of reading should read this book because it\u2019s just fun to read.<\/p>\n

View all my reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Arthur Rex by Thomas Berger My rating: 5 of 5 stars I came across Arthur Rex twenty seven years ago, in my high school library. That day I discovered two things: the joy of browsing stacks and finding random gems, and the joy of reading Thomas Berger. Arthur Rex was like no other book I\u2019d … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Review: Arthur Rex”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p24y52-lh","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1319"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1320,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1319\/revisions\/1320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}