Half Sick of Shadows: An underserved Arthurian heroine finally gets her due

Though many people are probably aware – or have at least heard of – the Lady of Shalott thanks to the famous Alfred Lord Tennison poem, most probably have a pretty sad and likely pitiable view of her. A depressed, lonely woman trapped in a tower, she is largely only memorable because she literally dies of unrequited love for King Arthur’s knight, Sir Lancelot.

Her story is both tragic and infuriating – she has her dead body floated down the river to Camelot in a boat so that Lancelot will find it, he feels guilty enough to pay for a rich funeral – and all the more so for generally being little more than a footnote in the stories of a man’s greater adventures and loves.

Laura Sebastian’s new novel Half Sick of Shadows sets out to change all that and succeeds admirably, rewriting Elaine of Astolat’s tale into a story of power and agency rather than unrelenting heartbreak and sorrow. (Though she certainly experiences both of those things along the way.)

True, this story still doesn’t have what you might call a happy ending – and you’re not ultimately sure which terrible vision of the end of Camelot Elaine has seen will ultimately come to pass or whether multiples of them do. But, unlike many versions of her tale, at least she gets to be the driving force in her own story and make choices that determine her own fate, giving her a heretofore unseen level of power within the narrative.

This Lady of Shalott grows up knowing that she is a Seer, an oracle who experiences visions of futures that may or may not come to pass. After spending much of her youth in the magical Fey realm of Avalon, where she meets and befriends Arthur, Morgana, Guinevere, and Lancelot, creating the sort of deep bonds and real friendships that could well save the world – or rip it apart.

When Arthur must return to Camelot in the wake of his father’s death, Elaine goes with him as one of his primary advisors, and as she and the rest of their group attempt to adapt their dreams of a utopian future to the real world they find themselves in, their relationships become increasingly complicated and fractured.

Elaine, who has seen futures that contain Arthur’s ruin, Morgana’s betrayal of her brother, and her own death, struggles to hold everyone together in the hopes that she can find a way to the one path that doesn’t end in destruction. (And perhaps grasp some happiness for herself along the way.) Her relationship with Lancelot is rewritten as a true love story, hopeful in spite of the doom hanging over it almost from its first moment – in the form of a shadow of a future betrayal with Guinevere-and you can’t help hoping that these crazy kids manage to work things out in the end.

Even if they’ve never been able to do so before now.

Sebastian smartly reconceptualizes the misogyny that sits at the heart of some Arthurian myths as a necessary evil, a choice made by powerful women like Elaine and Morgana when forced with impossible and worse options that will challenge everything they’ve told themselves they believe in. What is this Camelot, really, if its existence requires that these powerful women must make themselves smaller to be part of it? But what is a world without Camelot, that never learns to believe a better future is possible? Is that a sacrifice worth making? Maybe.

In Half Sick of Shadows there are no easy answers, and though Sebastian’s tale is likely to appeal more explicitly to those well versed in the intricacies of Arthuriana, there’s enough here for anyone familiar with the tale’s broad strokes to enjoy. This is the Elaine of Astolat I wish that legend had given us, but I’m certainly happy to meet her now.

Half Sick of Shadows is available now. Let us know if you plan to give it a look!