The Book: Storyteller by G R Grove

Review Category: E-Submitted requested review.

The Blurb: “Blood and fire, gold and steel and poetry, a river’s voice in the silence of the night, and the shining strings of a harp – all these and more I have known in my time… Now they are all gone, the men and women I knew when I was young, gone like words on the wind, and I am left here in the twilight to tell you their tale. Sit, then, and listen if you will to the words of Gwernin Kyuarwyd, called Storyteller…” So begins the tale of the young Gwernin’s adventures as a wandering storyteller and would-be bard in the chaos and contradictions of 6th century Britain. Along the way he encounters allies and enemies both human and supernatural, finds love and friendship, and learns the lore -and the true meaning - of a Bard’s profession.

Preview Available: Yup a perfectly satisfactory lulu one. This gives you more than enough to get your head around what’s going on.

Would I buy this? Probably, actually, but only when I was feeling flush. The book’s not cheap, likely part of the great online retailer little man squeeze. I stick to my feeling that in the end offering a lulu exclusive at low price is the long term winner where dealing with the Amazons may glean short term notoriety but will harm the title’s long term prospects…

The Product: I received a PDF reviewer’s copy but the PDF typography was indistinguishable from a commercial publication. So I would take that as a guide.

The Nitty Gritty: This title has been extensively and favourably reviewed elsewhere, it even won quite serious praise from POD Critic not a reviewer to hand the laurels to just anyone.

It’s unsurprising, therefore, that I find much to recommend about Storyteller. The points I’m going to mention here are centred around finding myself in a unique position as far as the POD review ring goes in appraising the work; that being that I was brought up in Wales from the age of seven until I was twenty and hence lived side by side with a culture that attempts to hold onto the very traditions described in this volume.

Not only that but having read way too many Arthurian spin off myths, not least the outlandish imaginings of Pat Mills in his Slaine series, and being a generic writer who enjoys researching mythology as much as riffing on it I’ve actually read the Mabinogion (where many of Gwernin’s supernatural visions originate) and traced the history of the Arthur myth myself. Not only that I once had the privilege of playing the Irish king Matholowch from the story of Branwen in a studio project when I was in my early twenties.

Essentially, if Ms Grove were looking for a critic on the Welsh angle of this novel she’d have to go to a university to get better; I’m not entirely sure an academic would care much about the entertainment value of the work either.

So how did Storyteller go over to a Welsh-raised mythology enthusuast? The weirdest thing was the use of the letter ‘K’. The Welsh language, by and large, eschews the letter ‘K’ to the level where a place in my home town known in English as “Killay” is translated to “Cila” in Welsh even though the pronunciation remains the same.

Seeing the name “Kyuarwyd” gave me a bit of an insight into what it must be like for people who are not Welsh speakers at all to tangle with “Llanelli” (my own knowledge of Welsh is entirely dependent on bilingual signs but I still don’t understand the problem non-Welsh people have with pronouncing “ll”). Looking at the handy phonetics guide at the back of the volume I worked out how it would be said and then cried out with revelation “Cyfarwyd”! Which made far more sense to me. From that point on the name seemed Welsh to me.

And that sums up my first criticism here. The account is written by an excellent writer who has had Wales explained to them in almost perfect detail. There were just some places where there’s no substitute for the real thing. It’s a small thing and I mention it here merely because part of the stated aims of the volume was to tangle with a “realistic as possible” depiction of Medieval Wales and yet in some small and mostly insignificant ways it sometimes misses the mark.

Far more regularly, however, one had to marvel at how the experience of Welshness comes through with crystal clarity. The book actually reminded me of Wales and experiences of Welshness to a startling degree. Far better, in fact, than many actual Welsh cultural artifacts which get all the Welsh transliterations correct.

So onto the story. At the outset when we join Gwernin and his companion, Ieuan, the book is episodic, lackadaisical and meditative. As the volume continues the past of the narrative catches up with Gwernin and he actually evolves into a clearer character instead of being just some Medieval Welsh travel writer.

One of the main problems I encountered with the book was that Gwernin did not become defined to me until most of the way through the book. When he first stated that he was sixteen years of age he seemed to me unusually wise and placid for such a young age. As Grove decides he is young so he starts to evolve the passions and foibles of a young man and it is a lot easier to see him as such. By the end the reader is fully engaged with the main character and his adventures that makes it a shame to have to finish the book. This is not an experience I had been anticipating from the fairly piecemeal beginning.

Not that any of the writing is particularly bad, quite the reverse. From a story point of view, however, the book looks like a diversion with no core beyond being a window into history and mythology for its first half only fortifying itself with a more traditional threaded story towards the end.

The most remarkable achievement in this is that the historical and mythological writing settle quite naturally into the flow with the gentle trials and tribulations of young Gwernin as he attempts to manage lofty artistic ambitions with the more personal concerns of any young man in the beginning of his life.

Gwernin’s romance with a girl at court provides a lot of tension and exposes an area for discussion of the responsibilities of a young bard as well as providing warm and tender moments in the volume. The human relationships in the book go from being handled as a vehicle for exposing more about Medieval Welsh life to being sensitively handled and filled with vitality and a full spectrum of emotion.

Essentially the book does not start balanced but rather grows into itself. The fact is the book as a whole ends up tending towards being more than the sum of its parts. This is due to Grove’s excellent command of the English language and clear purpose in writing this account. I think the actual plot and story of Gwernin himself snuck up on her as much as it does the reader and it is this stretch of the book from about the start of the section Winter In The Hills to the end that really elevates the book into a different place.

I am most keen to encounter the next volume of Gwernin’s adventures if such should come into being not least because there is a chance in that to make a whole volume that exists at that pitch.

Whoever picks up this book should be confident that it is as accurate as it can be and always entertaining even when it lacks something in velocity. It emerges as more than a fascinating account of what life in a largely undocumented stretch of history may have been like. It grows to become a truly involving, gently dramatic, introduction to a saga that has the potential to be as well regarded as the myths and legends Gwernin turned his attention to relating.