Title Lionors Series --- Author Barbara Ferry Johnson Cover Art --- Publisher Avon Books - 1975 First Printing Avon Books - 1975 Category Historical Warnings None Main Characters Lionors, Arthur Main Elements Mythology Website ---

When she was thirteen, Lionors first saw Arthur. Little did she know the consequences of that meeting. The handsome young knight would be declared King of Britain, marry the beautiful Guinevere, and fall to the treachery of his court while Lionors, secretly married to him, would bear his child and wait for him to leave his palace to be at her side in fulfillment of the old prophecy: "You will be a queen, but you will die uncrowned and unknown...

In my neighbourhood there is one of those book exchange boxes. Inside was this rather pitiful copy of an Arthurian legend book. The cover was nearly torn off, it was stained by some mysterious liquid and no one seemed to want it. Feeling sorry for it, and of course enjoying Arthurian tales, I decided to take it home. I am so glad I did, while the outside of the book makes one almost not want to touch it, the inside on the other one was beautiful.

Johnson's writing style was just wonderful, I outright enjoyed the reading experience itself. The tale revolves around Lionors whose tale I had not heard of before. Apparently she married Arthur in secret before he ever met Guinevere but becoming king forced him to marry the daughter of another powerful lord though he never stopped loving his first love Lionors. Because the tale is told from Lionors' point of view, and being a woman, she rarely leaves her estate. All those big events we usually see retold are brought to her secondhand long after the events were over and done, whenever some traveller happened to pass her way and stop for the night. While this might be an odd way of doing things for some readers, I really liked this way of telling the story.

Ah, and this is no fantasy, all magic gets explained away one way or another, anchoring this tale firmly in as much reality as is possible in an Arthurian retelling. It's still the knights of the round table stuff and not ancient saxon lord if you want to get really historically accurate, but Merlin is a pagan healer not a wizard, the sword in the stone was just a trick. I read a retelling of Troy that did a similar thing and enjoyed that as well. While I love fantasy, its interesting to do away with the fantasy parts and create something that could have actually happened.

So, I figured I'd read the book and put it back in the box...but instead I found myself instead keeping it as a special treasure I probably would have never stumbled across if it weren't for the fact that nobody else wanted it, lucky for me!