After The Odyssey, my students tackled about half of this King Arthur book. I think they liked it better, simply because they could understand it. It had been awhile since I had read any King Arthur, so I ended up reading the whole thing - it seemed like it would be hard to choose stories if I didn't know what the stories were, you know?I don't much feel like delving into King Arthur - it is what it is, chivalry, damsels, evil knights, etc - but I will say that I didn't particularly enjoy this edition. Although the introduction makes it clear that these are in fact separate stories and that Green relied on different sources, the book as set up seems to be one continuous narrative. And as a result, the main characters switch personalities at the drop of a hat. In Book One, Arthur is the young king who leads England to its destined glory; he's nearly absent from Books Two and Three and then suddenly in Book Four, he's been transformed into an impotent monarch blindsided by his wife's infidelity. Lancelot flip-flops between faithful and faithless, sickened and set upon his path, depending on the story. And then Mordred - in one chapter, he's ashamed of his deviousness, but then later, he's described as being evil as his nature.
In addition, I didn't understand some of the story choices. Morgana le Fay, Arthur's usual nemesis, barely appears in this version. And then, even stranger, Green identifies Mordred as her son, instead of the commonly accepted son of Arthur and his half sister Morgawse (which then adds an interesting motivation, that of a bastard son fighting his father for his birthright). It was just weird.
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