i’m sorry to say this one wasn’t my cup of tea :/ the modernisation of the arthurian myth felt too on the nose, and i just found it all terribly cringey.

Bliss & Blunder is a novel which retells Arthurian legend in a modern setting, placing Arthur as a tech company CEO and Gwen as his Instagram-famous wife, as a blackmailer and someone from the past both try and tear down Arthur's empire by revealing hidden secrets. In the Wiltshire town of Abury, Arthur's name is writ large, with his tech company and band of loyal men who work for him, but there's secrets lingering, like what his wife has been doing, and why her childhood best friend Morgan hates both of them, and what to do with Arthur and Gwen's wayward adoptive son, Mo. When Morgan returns to Abury, people are forced to revisit the past and things are about to get dramatic.

Bliss & Blunder is basically a modern AU (alternate universe) version of Arthurian legend, perhaps most recognisably Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur. I've read (and written) a fair few classic literature modern retellings, and loved Malory as an undergrad, so I felt I needed to read this one and see what it does. In short, it does what it says on the tin: updates Arthur's role to a modern tech CEO, rewrites many famous characters in various ways, and tries to find modern ways to explain some of the less straightforward elements of Arthurian legend (when I realised Gawain and the Green Knight was actually going to be a subplot, I was a bit impressed, as I'd assumed it would just be the pub name and that's it).

The narrative moves between the present day of the story and the past, mostly the schooldays of Arthur, Gwen, and Morgan, but there's plenty of the modern day story to move things forward. There's a lot of characters, and in most other books that might be tricky to manage, but the thing is, because it's based on something with so many characters (and a tendency to suddenly focus on one for a while), it does make sense, especially if you're familiar with the source material. Arthur himself, though important to the plot, doesn't really get as much of a focus as a character as Gwen and Morgan do, but generally the narrative has to move on characters pretty quickly to fit everything in (again, like in Malory, really, and that's long enough). Morgan in particular gets a nice deep delve into her as a character, with a strong emotional core to what she's doing and enough complexity to her feelings.

The actual plotline is pretty straightforward, following all the points you'd expect to tell a modernised version in which a tech company falls apart due to surveillance choices and treatment of employees and perhaps the most famous affair in literature is exposed (it can't be a spoiler to say it's Gwen and Lance, given that it's both incredibly famous and in the book from the start). There's fun subplots as well, bringing in other stories, but the story itself isn't really what makes the book, as with most modern retellings, as you can tell that certain elements have to be used just to make it work. If you don't know Arthurian legend, I don't know what you might think of the plot, and the fact that some of the subplots can feel a bit random without knowing why that they're based on (like Mo and Gal's eventual plotline, and definitely Wayne's).

The danger of a modern retelling is that people who know the source material will like some choices and dislike others. For me, I liked Galahad being a non-binary hacker who wasn't actually treated that well at the company as it draws something interesting out about Galahad being different to the other knights from Malory (if anyone could be a token non-binary character, it's probably Galahad), and I liked Mo, this book's version of Mordred, and I liked how their plotlines came together. I enjoyed that Gwen and Lance's relationship was translated into something still vital to them, but I also did wish we got more insight into Lance, and definitely into Lance and Wayne and the whole history between them, as that's one of my favourite bits of Malory. The use of a tech company instead of knights of the round table is an obvious modern retelling option, but is actually fleshed out enough here that it works, and the use of conflict in Afghanistan as a backdrop for some of the characters having actual being soldiers was interesting, but I think both elements were more background that really explored in depth, especially the latter. A lot of this is probably because more of the focus is on the female characters, so you get more of Gwen and Morgan's backstories than other parts that are more there to explain parts of the narrative.

On an almost side note, as someone who knows a lot more about Henry IV than Arthurian legend generally, I was very confused when a character starting speaking Falstaff's lines, and even more confused when said character turned out to actually be Falstaff. I mean, it's fun, for sure, and the book is full of easter eggs for people who know Arthurian stuff so why not also a bit of Shakespeare, but also, it was a tad bewildering.

The ending is going to be predictable, not just because of it being a retelling but really so is the end of a lot of knightly romances anyway, and I liked the attempt to give an overview of what happens to most characters, given how many there are of them. Overall, Bliss & Blunder has the wide ranging genre elements and characters of medieval romance, and the obvious modernisations of a retelling. Because a lot of the retelling choices felt like well-written fanfiction to me, I did find that at times I missed having a central character or relationship that was the focus, even though you don't get that with plenty of versions of Arthurian legend (Malory definitely not) but by the end, I do think it managed to pull together the many different threads in a way that felt purposeful, whilst still leaving people wondering a bit what happens next.

There are some books you cannot write a short review for. I'm not a medievalist, but as a non-binary fan of Malory who has done modern retellings of Henry IV and talks about tech companies and privacy at work, this was a book I had to read, and it certainly brings the fun, romp-like element of Arthurian legend into the modern day. Not everything in the book satisfied and there were parts of the modernised stuff that felt like they needed a bit more exploration of the implications (at times I wished it were grittier, but that's my tastes), but also you've got to appreciate a book that tries to pack in so much Arthurian legend into a modern version. It makes me long to get my scribbled-in copy of Le Morte D'Arthur back out.