Format: ebook
Release Date: May 25th, 2023
Age: Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Goodreads
Rating: 5/5 Stars
Firstly, thank you to Orbit for providing me a copy of this ebook via NetGalley. Views remain my own!
I will put my hands up and admit I put this book off for longer than I should have, because it’s actually really bloody good. Like so wrapped up in the story the world could have ended around me due to environmental collapse, complete with dragons, and I wouldn’t have noticed.
The amount that is tackled in this book is an absolute testament to Lee’s talent. Sir Kay, one of King Arthur’s knights, awakes from a mythical slumber whenever Britain has need of them. But now, Kay wakes in a world barely recognisable, and sees a dragon for the first time in centuries. England is dying. The Scottish and Welsh have declared independence, and the country is full of camps for environmental refugees, where tensions run high between different fractions. But what can one lone knight do in a world where those in charge don’t care, and those who do care spend more time arguing than looking for solutions?
Perilous Times is told through different POVs, the main three being Kay, Lancelot and Mariam. Throughout, we get an idea of the ‘real’ King Arthur, brash and quick to anger and all too willing to follow along with whoever has his ear. With the country in the state it’s in, Kay knows there are some who would rather put Arthur back in charge and let him deal with it, but Kay and Lancelot know that might do more harm to Britain than good.
Mariam is part of a feminist, eco-terrorist organisation, and through her we meet a band of women who clash and argue but ultimately try to do what’s right. I loved this group. You have the mysterious older woman who has quite literally seen it all, trying to guide these younger feminists as best she can. You have a young woman who is insistent that they stick to their morals and avoid killing any living thing, no matter how difficult or impractical that makes things. This whole group was just fun to read about, and they formed a kind of fractured found family, emphasised by how many people we see in the book are left without homes and families, forced to flee, and not always aiming their anger at the actual people who caused the mess.
Mariam wants to just hand things over to a hero and let him deal with it, but realises that kind of handing things over is why things were progressed in such a bad way so much. There’s definitely the foreboding sense of this being near-future, too, a glimpse into how things might go. And something I really appreciated was Lee pulls in various types of left-wing folks and activists and gives them almost a reckoning. I particularly appreciated the way he’s portrayed Wales in how they deal with the crisis, separating from England and raising a new king who absolutely refuses to speak in anything but Welsh.
All the different elements of the book and the way Lee approaches a variety of different social issues, reflected a lot in the experiences of Kay and Lancelot, the main knights we meet, gives a very great deal of satire, in an understated, subtle kind of way. It works. There are moments where characters let pride or fear get in their own way, and these are the moments where we see the real heroes arise.
Overall, this is a bloody fantastic book, one I think I’ll be thinking about for ages, and one that makes me very excited for whatever Thomas D. Lee comes out with next.
Unwrapping Words 