2 out of 5

A recasting of the Arthurian tales of Sir Erec and his eventual bride, Enide, with Morris figuring the former as a lout and the latter as an airhead chatterbox, with ‘Sir Givret the Short’ randomly pasted into events as our point of view, smarter-than-thou character.

If some of this stuff seems rather random – a contest to slay a magical stag to ‘win’ the kiss of a lady; Erec trampling off into the forest and getting into scuffles with three thieves and five knights – it’s all taken from Arthurian lore (Chrétien de Troyes is the name I kept reading…), and I did find the ‘updating’ into more modern language and kid-readable characters by author Morris to be well effected.  From a YA perspective, you get the edutainment of reading a version of classic writing, and some language skills thanks to an ongoing joke with olde English.  Alas, that ‘joke’ is pretty much the only one in the entire book, and Morris has a spectacularly blase way of writing that tends to undersell tension.  Matched with Aaron Renier’s spot illustrations, the artist doesn’t have much to highlight, and struggles to create a sense of focus with the scenes he does.  The book is still short and light, though, so more just average than bad, however…

…In the summaries I read of the original material, there’s something missing that Morris “adds:” sexism.  Enide isn’t painted as the empty-headed nag she is here, and the aforementioned contest with lady kisses as the prize makes sure to have a laugh about how all women are incredibly self-conscious about how they’re evaluated by their men.  Sure, stuff written in the 12th century or whatever isn’t going to be progressive with gender roles, but I felt like Morris went out of his way to sprinkle his own judgements in for good merit.

Nah.