Galahad
I read this book in college as part of my literature studies and its always been a book that’s hung around in my head, rent-free, far longer than it should have. It was formative in many ways when I was my junior year in college, because it told a bit of my life of the time, but also because the ideas and morals in it still plays a major part.
Re-reading it so many years later, I can say its still a great book. It deals with Galahad, and dealing with Galahad you have to deal with the whys, and the hows that he became the most pious and strongest knight of the table, while dealing with the chase of the grail. He’s the prototype of paladins as we know it in D&D, the chaste, the unsoiled, the crazy pious.
this book explains why he came to be that way, in an original Arthurian legend that is criminally underread. You cannot talk about Galahad without talking about the sin that Lancelot committed with Guinevere against his king, and this book goes through all of it. You also have to know that Elaine was the actual mother of Galahad, and Guinevere never quite forgave Lancelot (obviously I’m talking about the Thomas Mallory version of the Arthurian legends).
I started this book earlier in the year and took almost 6 months to finish it because the corruption of Galahad was, and still is one of the hardest things for me to read. Now that I’m a parent, if anyone sought to corrupt my child as Guinevere does so in this book, I would probably commit murder or something. Becuase that’s really what it is. Corruption of the mind to pursue only the righteous and reject everything else. Simply rejecting humanity as a whole to pursuit something that is alien to humanity.
I have to recommend this book, and forgive the lack of coherence in this review. Its still a book that strikes a bit of a raw nerves because of the time of my life when I first read this book and it brings it all back.
Recommended!