From Publishers Weekly
The conclusion of David's 21st-century Arthurian trilogy will please fans of the previous two books,
Knight Life and
One Knight Only, but those expecting humorous fantasy on the level of Terry Pratchett or Monty Python will be disappointed. King Arthur, who has served as the mayor of New York City and even as president of the United States under the name Arthur Penn, is suddenly forced to tell the world who he really is and that he possesses the Holy Grail. Attempts to go mass market with the Grail's curative properties create complications involving Nazis and assorted other menaces. Despite the author's propensity for punning titles and silly archaisms like "Ye Olde Interlude," the resultant oil-and-water mixture achieves neither comedy nor drama, much less a blending of the two as in T.H. White's
The Once and Future King. The incongruity of great, mythic figures behaving (or speaking) in an entirely banal and trivial manner is, alas, only that.
(June) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Arthur and Gwen are hiding away on their yacht when Percival and Ziusura (aka Noah) bob up on a submersible ark to tell them pics of Gwen on the boat are all over. Since she is supposedly virtually dead, that's a big deal. Time to go back to Washington, where Arthur used to be president, and fess up that Gwen is A-OK because she supped from the recently rediscovered Holy Grail (see
One Knight Only, 2003). Immediately, every sick body in the world wants a sip, and Arthur agrees to marketing Grail Ale. But the course of true healing doesn't go smoothly. Arthur's bottling-entrepreneur partner is other than he seems, the Spear of Destiny (used to kill the last unicorn, as "Ye Olde Prelude" relates) has resurfaced, and Spear and Grail combined can be used to wipe the world clean--of people, as, natch, someone wants to do. The conclusion of David's trilogy of modern-day Arthurian yarns unfolds like an ideal basis for a collaborative movie by Frank Capra and -Steven Spielberg.
Ray OlsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
