Laura Sebastian’s Half Sick of Shadows tells the origin story of King Arthur and his closest confidants: his best friend, Lancelot; his love, Guinevere; his sister, Morgana le Fay; and his friend, Elaine of Shalott, as they grow from teenagers to young adults on the mystical isle of Avalon and return to Camelot to support Arthur taking his place as rightful king of the realm.
As a lover of fairy tales, legends, and mythologies, I was intrigued by Sebastian’s approach to the well-trod story of King Arthur and his knights of the round table, and sure enough, her novel led to a fascinating reading experience. Sebastian has been a YA author for much of her career, and Half-Sick of Shadows is her first novel written for adults, one that she has been writing and evolving since high school. Honestly, it actually feels like a book written for college-aged readers. The characters are all between the ages of 22 and 25, and the characters and their choices and actions all feel very authentic to young adults taking their first steps into the full adult roles they will be playing the rest of their lives. I don’t actually know if that was the intent, but regardless, it is not a bad thing. In fact, it makes sense. Considering how young she was when she started writing the story, as she grew and evolved as a human and writer, so did her characters and her story. I actually think it’s pretty cool, and I’d love to read more books that are definitively written for an audience making the transition from childhood to adulthood.
Much of the success of that tone lies with Sebastian’s characters. They all feel very true to their legendary counterparts while also feeling fresh, modern, and authentic without being anachronistic. Elaine, Morgana, and Guinevere and their friendship are the centerpiece of the novel. All three are fully-realized, complex, and luminous, driving forward the action in countless immeasurable ways. As such, Lancelot and, to a lesser extent, Arthur come off as a tad less distinct. Elaine, our narrator, also becomes repetitive at times, the worrier always under tightly-held control, but that repetition slowly falls away to reveal a particularly subtle and impactful evolution for her. Even Merlin, a relatively minor character in the novel, is reimagined, striking in how chilling and opportunistic he is. One thing I didn’t like was the five main characters’ use of nicknames that felt too anachronistic for the setting. It was one of the few modern touches that pulled me out of the story.
Beyond her characters, Sebastian writes gorgeous descriptions of place and time–Half Sick of Shadows is by far one of my most vivid recent reads. It is worth reading if, for nothing else, to appreciate how fully her writing envelopes you so fully in every location and environment her characters exist in, even down to the snippets of vision that Elaine experiences. She also creates a fairly complicated internal structure to her story, weaving Elaine’s visions of possible futures in and out, pulling gently on strings and maneuvering a final path into place, even as the overarching plot is fairly linear. Sebastian expertly drops clues to twists and turns, most notably for a secret about Guinevere that would seem both shocking and laughable if I told you out of context but, within the world of the story, completely works. Finally, the climax is both unexpected and absolutely right, and once you read it, you realize that no other ending is possible, just as Elaine does.
There are a few hitches here and there and some places where things could be tighter, but overall, Half Sick of Shadows was a compelling and thrilling origin novel for Arthur and his friends. I’m looking forward to reading more of Sebastien’s work.
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