This book was slow going. The academic hunt for King Arthur was for me what kept me reading. The remainder, not so much. The ending was lackluster and disappointing for me. In my opinion the characters are one dimensional and their backstory just doesn’t sit well with the search for Arthur. It’s like the author was trying to mimic the love triangle between Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot, but it just seems to be a hot mess and doesn’t add anything. ( )

Very, very enjoyable entry in the modern Arthurian canon. ( )

Finding Camlann is the search by Donald Gladstone, an archaeologist, for the substance behind the Arthurian myth. Working from three different points of view with an aging Welsh scholar and an Oxford linguist, Gladstone's search channels in toward the physical proof of Arthur's final battle and resting place. I loved the interwoven story lines, the search for source material and the piecing together of Arthur's historical presence. ( )

Fine, just. The style is variable, but improves after a fairly rocky start. However, the opening Scrabble game is sadly prophetic of the intellectual challenge of the rest of the novel: the characters miss the blindingly obvious repeatedly, only to have 'insight' fall into their laps or be offered freely by another. It is unclear why the author made his hero an archaeologist, when he behaves as a historian for the sake of the plot (and could have had the same preoccupations as a historian); and the Welsh uprising subplot feels like a superfluous handle to free the heroine from her marriage. All in all, frustratingly unsatisfying without being awful - not least because of occasional flashes that feel utterly authentic, such as Donald's way of navigating cross country based on historical and archaeological features. ( )

Who was the historical King Arthur? When and where did he die? Did he exist at all? What do we really know? These are the questions posed in archaeologist Donald Gladstone's unfinished book. With the help of OED linguist Julia Llewellyn, whose expertise in the Welsh language (as well as her personal connections in Wales) will prove invaluable, he pursues the arcane, elusive evidence in this lyrical and cerebral mystery that is also a restrained and convincing love story. And the countryside of England, Wales and Cornwall, from Oxford to Tintagel to Wye and points in between, functions as a major character in FINDING CAMLANN, lovingly rendered and giving up its secrets only via painstaking attention to its details.

It's not every day that a plot hinges on clues found in carbon dating, lexicography and ancient poetry, but Pidgeon makes it work, inviting the reader to engage with his protagonists in their quest for answers to one of history's most compelling mysteries. ( )