Recent Reads {The Pendragon Cycle Book One - Taliesin}

I've been thinking that there are likely hundreds of books out there titled Arthur, and after a recent online conversation, I've realized that there may be another series of books out there titled The Pendragon Cycle.   For the purposes of this blog entry, I am referring to The Pendragon Cycle of books written by Stephen Lawhead.  I am now the proud owner of the first four of the five books in this series, as well as some other Lawhead titles.  I'm becoming quite a fan of his.

 

The first book in the set is Taliesin.  Maybe I was not well-informed, but I didn't know there was a historical figure named Taliesin.  I thought of it only as a place, and that only recently, since we visited Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin, which was the summer home and studio of the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright.  I knew he'd chosen the name from something related to his own Welsh background but that was all.  Well, there was a Welsh poet and bard named Taliesin that lived around 534 - 599.  Little is known about him, but he is the earliest Welsh language poet whose work has survived.  Legend surrounds other aspects of his life, but he was present in the courts of at least three Celtic British kings.  In this book, Lawhead weaves a fascinating story around the legends, and adds another interesting twist - some survivors of the Lost Island of Atlantis make it to the shores of the Island of the Mighty (as they refer to Britain) and the stories of the two groups of people are intertwined.  In Lawhead's tale, Taliesin also finds the One True God and is a player in bringing Christianity to the Britons and to the surviving Atlanteans.  This was a wonderful book, combining as Lawhead does so well the snippets of history with legend and fantasy, into a story that I didn't want to put down. 

 

Thankfully, when I finished reading it and had to put it down, I had the second book in the series ready to start so that the story didn't have to end.