Two stars is a bit harsh for this book, as Lawhead deftly weaves together two separate storylines for much of the book. Charis, our female protagonist in Atlantis, lives some interesting family drama. Meanwhile, Taliesin, our male counterpart, is growing up in Britain as a wunderkind with destiny written all over him. As the cover so coyly tells us, there is a love story coming, and we the readers are left with a surprising amount of tension as we are attempting to figure out how, exactly, these two people are ever going to get together.Then, the cataclysm hits, and *spoiler* Atlantis sinks. Suddenly, the book speeds up to an alarming pace, and Lawhead decides that he's going to stop building character, and instead plow through tons of legend-inspired storyline to show off that Yes, he did do his research and Yes, he'd be happy to prove it. What follows is a rushed retelling of a mishmash of legends, droning on like a combination the worst of all types. It reads like Beowulf at its most laconic combined with preachy Mallory and served with a generous side of distracted Tolkeinesque world-building. None of which appeals to me, the reader, as I am just wishing that I could figure out what's going on with the characters. What started as a compelling, if somewhat simplistic, character drama, turns instead to a very distracted tale of legend.Adding insult to injury is the (to me) intolerable way that Christianity is shoved down the reader's throat in the last half of the book. Our title character, Taliesin, is a druid, born with a destiny to be THE BEST DRUID EVAR!!!!1 and everything he does proves just how amazing he is. He's connected with the gods, he walks in the otherworld, and he has prophetic visions. He kicks ass and chews Druidic willowbark. Then, this fuddy little priest comes along, and Taliesin, with next to no warning, forsakes everything he ever knows. Clearly this monotheistic God is better than all those other Gods. We, the readers, know this because... well, because Taliesin has an internal monologue which goes "Why would this God be better than the rest? Because the priest said so! Why would the priest say so? Because his God is better than the rest!" Better justifications for this major transformation from Pagan to monotheism can be found at any old Tent Revival. Was Lawhead even trying?I've worked myself into a review-lather and now the book sounds awful. The book isn't that bad. Or, more accurately, it's exactly that bad, but no worse. My advice is to read the first two thirds, write it off as a tragedy, and don't bother with the rest of the book. Now I'm off to get the second book in the series and see if there's any point to continuing. After all, there's promise here, and I'm a glutton for punishment.
This book is about two characters. I loved one of them. Unfortunately, I didn't have much use for the other.Lawhead's prose is never brilliant, but sometimes in simplicity he finds a certain elegance nonetheless, particularly when dealing with characters. Call me a sucker for a tough girl, but I adored the character of Charis. I loved her as a child, I loved her even more as an adult. I loved her as a brash, dangerous, wounded person, living on the edge and excelling. It's all very romanticized there, very awesome. If the entire book had been about her, I would have been thrilled.Unfortunately, I was also forced to endure Taliesin, who was not nearly so enthralling. I can understand his vague connection to Arthurian literature, but let's face it, it's not like he's Merlin. The fact that he spends most of the book viewed from other characters' perspectives probably indicates that Lawhead was trying to set him up as this legendary figure, relying on his fame to...oh wait, ooooops, actually, Taliesin isn't all that famous. Sorry, Stephen. The trouble with Taliesin is that my beloved Charis promptly transforms into a lovestruck goofball the instant she encounters him, which from that point on basically turns the book into Twilight for me. While I can see the possibility of this being an epic romance, I simply can't believe it because I can't see WHY either character would so adore the other. It really doesn't make a lot of sense. Charis basically likes Taliesin because he's hot. As for him...*shrug*. Who knows?I enjoyed this book a lot, don't get me wrong. It had a lot of flaws, but it was still very readable. If only Lawhead could have invested the title character with a little more pizazz...
What do You think about Taliesin (1998)?
I wanted to love this book. Truly, I did. It's supposed to be a re-imagining of the Arthurian saga, and since I'm a King Arthur geek, I was excited about starting Taliesin. But I just couldn't get into it. I didn't care about the characters, the plot didn't really accomplish much, and the first half of the book seemed to have almost nothing to do with the second half.I'm not going to lie, though -- I got a bit of a kick out of fact that the sections were copied directly from the Mabinogion. And I'll cut the book some slack because it's the first in a series. Maybe it will find its feet later. I did enjoy the whole conversion-to-Christianity subplot, because it deals quite well with the cultural and personal struggles that such a conversio would have entailed.But considering that there's so much good Arthurian/Celtic myth-based fantasy out there, this book didn't hold my interest. Maybe this is supposed to be a "historical" book, and I'm expecting the wrong things. But even in a pseudo-historical retelling, I prefer to be given a reason to care.
—Smilingplatypus
Lawhead's Pendragon cycle gets off to a rocky start with Taliesin. Perhaps it's that I set the bar too high, expecting great things from such a renowned author, or perhaps it's that I'm reading the cycle for my dissertation and hence got overly critical, but either way, the book suffers from poor writing, poor plotting, and a few major historical inaccuracies that ruined it for me.The writing: passive voice abounds. The dialogue is stilted. The characters are two-dimensional and hardly have any development at all. And when the romance gets started, the pathos is stifling.The plotting: this whole book could have been done in half the space. Not much actually happens, and there is a ton of padding. Even with two concurrent storylines running for the first half of the book, nothing much actually happens. I spend most of the book wondering why any of the stuff Lawhead was telling us about was in any way important.And the historical inaccuracies: unless some sort of time-travel occurs that I missed, Lawhead has Atlantis sink in the 400s AD, right around the time the Romans are withdrawing from Britain. Considering that the legendary Atlantis sank closer to 9600 BC, this completely ruined a huge chunk of the book for me. The British people believe that the Atlanteans are faery folk, and if that had turned out to somehow be the case--if they'd hung out for a few thousand years before the British ran across them--that would have been different. But they're mortal, and the legendary sinking is stuck right in the middle of recorded history. Also, Taliesin takes to Christianity entirely too quickly and with too much verve. Yes, the British people were Christian before the Anglo-Saxons came in, but in the space of a conversation with God (!!) during a spirit-walk (which, tellingly, Taliesin swears never to do again after converting), Taliesin is a full-blown Christian who refers to the pagans around him as heretics, blasphemers, and unlearned people--as if he wasn't a pagan twelve minutes before.Overall, this book was a huge disappointment. Considering all the hype around Lawhead (I've heard he's right up there with Marion Zimmer Bradley for authoritativeness in modern Arthurian fantasy), I expected much more.
—Shiloh (Fantastic Reading)
Of all of the great books I've read around the King Arthur legend, this is my favorite. It is acutally about Merlin's parents, and involves the lost city of Atlantis and it is a beautiful but sad love story. At least that is what I feel when I remember the book; it has been years since I read it. [time passes:] I just looked it up to see if it is still in print, which it is. And what's more interesting is that the description on Amazon talks of a message and symbolism in the story akin to C.S. Lewis. I don't remember that, so I want to read it yet again, which makes it a 5 on my criteria scale.
—Krista
