Post by bookwyrm on Apr 30, 2009 8:00:54 GMT -5
I just finished the Pendragon Cycle for the first time and I finished Avalon about a week ago. After reading Avalon, I went to Amazon and read the reviews. I am always curious to see other opinions about books that I loved.
One of the main complaints most people had with Avalon had to do with the weakness of the character Moira. For those reviewers who had actually read the entire Cycle (and not just Avalon as a stand-alone) most people complained that Moira was underdeveloped, incompetent, weak, and nothing like the sweeping force of evil that was formerly known as Morgian.
I shared these thoughts as well, and wondered why those observations seemed to be accurate. In thinking about the rest of the Cycle, these are the things that I came up with.
* When Merlin confronted Morgian (in the fight where he became blind), Merlin said that Morgian's power had been 'broken.' She might not have been killed, but he seemed confident that he had dealt her a significant blow.
* At the end of Arthur, Gwalchami was able to capture Morgian and lead her as a prisoner to the Round Table. I cannot see a powerful Morgian being captured by anyone, and yet she was. She seemed to me like a trapped animal, launching into lies and insults as a last-chance effort to save herself (as if that was her only power at the time) and was then killed by a knife wound.
* Merlin confronted Moira at Arthur's Seat in Avalon. He was able to defeat her rather easily with a simple rock circle, prayer, and enchantments. At that point Moira seemed to be all bark and no real bite.
* Other than launching a few Latin curses at Merlin and Jenny, Moira seemed to have few (if any) real powers. She killed people by what seemed to be very ordinary means (throwing someone out of a window, drowning someone else) and appeared to lack much of the cunning and power and ability to generate the kind of oppressive fear that she possessed in the rest of the Cycle.
* While the powers of darkness can be formidable, there is no power greater than the God of Light. She was playing from a disadvantage from the beginning.
* We are not told how Morgian returned to modern-day times, but her return was, in my opinion, stunted by her loss to Merlin, her apparent mortal death, her submission to a higher (but darker) power, and her eventual mini-defeat at the hands of Merlin at Arthur's Seat.
* This is all compared to Merlin who seems to have survived the centuries unscathed. He has faced Morgian many times and, while wounded, has still won every encounter. He serves a higher power and a greater God. His powers were not diminished over the centuries while Morgian's were (including a period of time when she appeared to have been killed).
So in a sense I can see where a weaker character in Moira would be disappointing. At the same time, considering what she has endured and lost over the centuries, it seems quite a feat that she exists at all. She shows her power in the fact that she appears enough in Avalon to cause trouble at all, but it also shows how far she has fallen since the height of her power centuries ago.
Any thoughts?
One of the main complaints most people had with Avalon had to do with the weakness of the character Moira. For those reviewers who had actually read the entire Cycle (and not just Avalon as a stand-alone) most people complained that Moira was underdeveloped, incompetent, weak, and nothing like the sweeping force of evil that was formerly known as Morgian.
I shared these thoughts as well, and wondered why those observations seemed to be accurate. In thinking about the rest of the Cycle, these are the things that I came up with.
* When Merlin confronted Morgian (in the fight where he became blind), Merlin said that Morgian's power had been 'broken.' She might not have been killed, but he seemed confident that he had dealt her a significant blow.
* At the end of Arthur, Gwalchami was able to capture Morgian and lead her as a prisoner to the Round Table. I cannot see a powerful Morgian being captured by anyone, and yet she was. She seemed to me like a trapped animal, launching into lies and insults as a last-chance effort to save herself (as if that was her only power at the time) and was then killed by a knife wound.
* Merlin confronted Moira at Arthur's Seat in Avalon. He was able to defeat her rather easily with a simple rock circle, prayer, and enchantments. At that point Moira seemed to be all bark and no real bite.
* Other than launching a few Latin curses at Merlin and Jenny, Moira seemed to have few (if any) real powers. She killed people by what seemed to be very ordinary means (throwing someone out of a window, drowning someone else) and appeared to lack much of the cunning and power and ability to generate the kind of oppressive fear that she possessed in the rest of the Cycle.
* While the powers of darkness can be formidable, there is no power greater than the God of Light. She was playing from a disadvantage from the beginning.
* We are not told how Morgian returned to modern-day times, but her return was, in my opinion, stunted by her loss to Merlin, her apparent mortal death, her submission to a higher (but darker) power, and her eventual mini-defeat at the hands of Merlin at Arthur's Seat.
* This is all compared to Merlin who seems to have survived the centuries unscathed. He has faced Morgian many times and, while wounded, has still won every encounter. He serves a higher power and a greater God. His powers were not diminished over the centuries while Morgian's were (including a period of time when she appeared to have been killed).
So in a sense I can see where a weaker character in Moira would be disappointing. At the same time, considering what she has endured and lost over the centuries, it seems quite a feat that she exists at all. She shows her power in the fact that she appears enough in Avalon to cause trouble at all, but it also shows how far she has fallen since the height of her power centuries ago.
Any thoughts?
