The King’s Peace is Jo Walton’s take on the Arthurian legends. Jo has never been a particularly good author for me, and this book is no exception. It is the first in a series, and I didn’t bother to pick up the rest. It’s also telling that this book, purportedly about King Arthur, puts a young woman on the cover and as the main character – the feminist impulse to re-imagine one of history’s most emphatically male tales in that manner loses most of its impact when it becomes clear that this retelling adds little to the genre of the Arthurian legends and lacks even the distinction of being the first or best feminist retelling. To be honest, at least in this book the story is less a retelling of the legend than it is the biography of a minor character who happens to witness it.
Fans of Jo Walton might have a better reaction than I did. As it was, the book was readable but left little impression on me. I did manage to finish the book before uttering the eight deadly words (“I don’t care what happens to these people.”).
