Genre: Arthuriana

Review – Immortal Red Sonja, vol 2

Posted August 24, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Immortal Red Sonja, vol 2

Immortal Red Sonja

by Dan Abnett, Alessandro Miracolo

Genres: Arthuriana, Fantasy, Graphic Novels
Pages: 136
Series: Immortal Red Sonja #2
Rating: one-star
Synopsis:

The journey has been long, and the dangers grave - but now, armed with a fuller understanding of the burden she carries, Sonja the Red and her cursed chainmail set off on the final leg of their magical journey through the Dead Lands. What she finds in the endless fog, and the truths that Merlyn reveals, will change her forever - and set the whole world in a new direction!Acclaimed author DAN ABNETT and renowned artist ALESSANDRO MIRACOLO bring their unique new vision of the She-Devil With a Sword to a stunning conclusion in this second volume of Immortal Red Sonja! Collects issues #6-10.

Volume two of Dan Abnett’s Immortal Red Sonja wraps up on the story of the cursed mail shirt, supposedly containing the spirit of King Arthur. I find it a bit disorientating as a fan (and sometime scholar, dissertation and all) of Arthuriana: the cherrypicking and twisting of names and stories is a bit bewildering, and yet there’s clearly knowledge behind it (linking Gawain with the Green Knight, though of course the Green Knight should be Bertilak, not Gawain). Sometimes it was hard to tell if it was deliberate distortion or just random scraps cobbled together without research.

Story-wise, it was fairly unsurprising, and I have some kind of feeling about the idea of Red Sonja, of all people, being a successor to King Arthur. What in the heck. She should be underestimated at your peril, but she’s not High King material, and it’s especially weird to have her be the heir to a Welsh king (prince, in the original, but okay).

In the end, I think my ambiguous feelings about the first volume resolve to oh hell no, not so much because it adapts stories of King Arthur and twists them far out of true, but because it just doesn’t come together.

I’m not a great lover of the art in this particular run, though some of the cover variants are great.

Rating: 1/5 (“didn’t like it”)

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Review – Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Posted June 7, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

by Simon Armitage

Genres: Arthuriana, Classics, Poetry
Pages: 114
Rating: five-stars
Synopsis:

Preserved on a single surviving manuscript dating from around 1400, composed by an anonymous master, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was rediscovered only two hundred years ago, and published for the first time in 1839. One of the earliest great stories of English literature after Beowulf, the poem narrates in crystalline verse the strange tale of a green knight on a green horse, who rudely interrupts the Round Table festivities one Yuletide, casting a pall of unease over the company and challenging one of their number to a wager. The virtuous Gawain accepts and decapitates the intruder with his own axe. Gushing blood, the knight reclaims his head, orders Gawain to seek him out a year hence, and departs. Next Yuletide Gawain dutifully sets forth… His quest for the Green Knight involves a winter journey, a seduction scene in a dream-like castle, a dire challenge answered — and a drama of enigmatic reward disguised as psychic undoing.

Simon Armitage’s new version is meticulously responsive to the tact and sophistication of the original — but equally succeeds in its powerfully persuasive ambition to be read as an original new poem. It is as if, six hundred years apart, two northern poets set out on a journey through the same mesmeric landscapes — acoustic, physical and metaphorical — in the course of which the Gawain poet has finally found his true and long-awaited translator.

Simon Armitage’s translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is not a straightforwardly scholarly one (though if you read his introduction, it’s clear that he’s critically engaged with the poem, its language, and the process of translation). It’s a bit like Seamus Heaney’s take on Beowulf: it’s a translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and it’s also something of its own.

It’s definitely not the version I used when studying the poem, though it is my favourite, and it’s long been the translation I would recommend for pure fun. If you want a version of Sir Gawain that doesn’t have any spin put on it, you’ll be best off leaving this aside and going to find a copy of the Middle English version with glosses, or if you can’t read Middle English, a reasonable scholarly facing-translation.

But this version is an excellent one as far as experiencing the poem goes, playing with the language, genuinely attempting the alliterative form (sometimes to mixed success, in my opinion), and making the poem feel pretty alive. Read it aloud to yourself if you can!

I love it dearly, and I’ve just snagged a copy of the audiobook read by Armitage on Libro.fm, which should also be great. This was a very good reread choice on my part.

Rating: 5/5

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Review – Immortal Red Sonja, vol 1

Posted February 21, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Immortal Red Sonja, vol 1

Immortal Red Sonja

by Dan Abnett, Alessandro Miracolo, Emiliana Pinna, Luca Colandrea

Genres: Arthuriana, Fantasy, Graphic Novels
Pages: 136
Series: Immortal Red Sonja #1
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

Sonja...as you have never witnessed!

It is a time of British legend! A young Red Sonja, cursed by mysterious chainmail, seeks counsel with the mysterious MERLIN. She seeks to be rid of her curse, in order to forge a future of fantasy and adventure! She will be pursued by the loathsome GREEN KNIGHT, and if she survives and arrives at the Castle Of Merlin, what she finds would be infinitely more than she bargained for.

Dan Abnett’s Immortal Red Sonja grabbed my attention because it draws Red Sonja into Arthurian myth — might as well wave a red flag in front of a bull!

I try to approach this kind of thing with an open mind: the Arthurian legends have been embroidered and adapted and changed and cut to a new size so many times, that’s part of how they work. There’s no one source to be faithful to. I do have certain feelings about the long-ago and highly successful appropriation of Arthur stories from the Welsh, rewriting him to be a rather English king… but that’s not Abnett’s fault.

So I’m not going to complain that it was “inaccurate” about Arthurian myth, though I did find the choices interesting in light of the general trend of how people perceive and portray Arthur. I’m also not going to complain about the fact that Sonja spent the whole volume rather more clothed than usual, thanks to the cursed mail shirt which harbours the spirit of Arthur. I thought it adapted some of the stories and tropes of Arthurian myth interestingly, and I’m very curious how the thing with Bertilak plays out for Red Sonja.

I can’t seem to easily get my hands on the rest of the story, but I’d read it if it came my way.

Rating: 3/5

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