Griffith, whose meticulous research into 7th-century Britain helped make Hild one of the more compelling recent historical novels, is well aware of this, as she explains in detail in her author’s note to Spear, her equally compelling re-imagining of Arthurian legends. Instead, in quite different ways, each author shows us how a vividly rendered archaic world can be made to feel like fantasy even before the supernatural fireworks show up. That evidence can still be comparatively scant when looking as far back as 6th-century Wales or 9th-century Iceland – the focus, respectively, of Nicola Griffith’s Spear and Sarah Tolmie’s All the Horses of Iceland – but it doesn’t mean that historical research is pointless in such tales. For fantasy writers, on the other hand, the idea of an ancient demon-haunted world full of sorcerers and plagues has often seemed like catnip – at least until a few of them began looking at the same historical evidence that led historians to reconsider the period. In terms of actual scholarship, it’s probably a good thing that historians have largely abandoned the pejorative “Dark Ages” to describe the early medieval period, since it had become such a broad-brush pop-culture shorthand that it eventually seemed to refer to everything between the fall of Rome and the rise of Amazon. Nebula and Lambda Award-winning author Nicola Griffith returns with Spear, a glorious queer retelling of Arthurian legend, full of dazzling magic and intoxicating adventure.Īt the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.Spear, Nicola Griffith ( Tordotcom 978-2-1, $19.99, 192pp, hc) April 2022. And she will find her love, and the lake, and her fate. On her adventures she will meet great knights and steal the hearts of beautiful women. She grows up in the wild, in a cave with her mother, but visions of a faraway lake come to her on the spring breeze, and when she hears a traveler speak of Artos, king of Caer Leon, she knows that her future lies at his court.Īnd so, brimming with magic and eager to test her strength, she breaks her covenant with her mother and, with a broken hunting spear and mended armour, rides on a bony gelding to Caer Leon.

The girl knows she has a destiny before she even knows her name.

Genre: Fairy Tales, Myths & Fables,Books,Fiction & Literature,Sci-Fi & Fantasy,Fantasy,Gay,Ī spellbinding and subversive queer recasting of Arthurian myth by the legendary author of Hild.

Spear by Nicola Griffith