Mordred, Bastard Son

Conceived in violence, born of royalty, and raised in exile, Mordred grows to manhood torn between his powerful mother's desire for revenge, his own conflicted feelings towards the father who betrayed him, and his passionate coming of age into first love with one of the greatest knights of Camelot.

Reviews of Mordred, Bastard Son
*Starred Review* "Riveting...Clegg puts an inspired wrinkle in the hoary tale of Arthur and the grail by casting Arthur's kindred enemy, Mordred, as a gay man. An injured stranger in a cloak and odd, paganish mask, is captured and held in a monastery, igniting wild speculation among the locals, who believe him a notorious traitor. And so he is. He is Mordred, the bastard son of Arthur Pendragon and his half sister, the witch-queen Morgan Le Fay, and he now awaits trial for murder and treason...How excellent." - Booklist

"Douglas Clegg's stunning Mordred, Bastard Son will inspire and refresh..." - Michael Rowe, Advocate Magazine

"Clegg (The Priest of Blood) maintains a nice balance between the human and mythic dimensions of his characters, portraying the familiar elements of their story from refreshingly original angles." - Publishers Weekly

"Well-crafted. Written in lyrical prose with colorful characters and historical depth. Lovers of both history and fantasy will discover...an enchanting read." - Edge Boston

"Clegg beautifully skewers the Arthurian legends, weaving a compelling story, single-handedly reinventing Mordred's sexuality. He is no longer the betrayer of Arthur, the knight Lancelot, and Guinevere, Queen of the Britons; he is now the seductive and passionate hero, a lover of men given the almost insurmountable task of finding the cauldron of rebirth..." - Michael Leonard, Curled Up with a Good Book Blog

"...Magic-true magic that really works-takes center stage in...Mordred, Bastard Son...a refreshing return to the myth and magic of the legends...Clegg's approach recalls Sir Thomas Mallory, Chrtien de Troyes, and even Edmund Spenser at times; his setting is never made temporally explicit but rather melds Celtic, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, and high medieval British elements." - Strange Horizons

Discover Douglas Clegg's fiction
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