2013 book 12

Sean Pidgeon's Finding Camlann
So this was described as being like A.S. Byatt's Possession, except about scholars studying King Arthur instead of medieval poetry (or whatever it was they were doing in Possession, I don't really remember). And I guessss that is accurate, except that the scholars here don't have any "omg WOW!" moments, at least not in my mind. Congratulations, you fixed a mis-translation and are looking at some maps! I kept waiting for a big exciting discovery to happen and lead to other exciting discoveries, but all the discoveries here were small and boring, and also I have to say there was some seriously shoddy scholarship happening. No good archaeologist would make the leaps this guy makes.

Which brings me to the characters. The other thing that happens in Possession is a torrid scholarly romance (I think?) and so clearly this book needs to have one too. Except that, being an Arthurian kind of story, there has to be a love triangle, so our linguist lady is married. And she's not even in a bad marriage, just a vaguely dissatisfying one (at first, and then things take a really dumb turn). Not to mention that the archaeologist and the linguist have absolutely no chemistry, so that whole plotline was a bust for me. There's also a whole subplot about Welsh politics and legends that feels really shoehorned in--the book would have been way tighter without it, and it feels like a really false way to drive a wedge between the linguist and her husband. Like just have an honest conversation and don't wait for the end of the book for a big reveal out of nowhere.

This book is not bad by any means (I mean besides being kind of boring), but it annoyed the heck out of me. C+.