A fluid retelling of Arthurian legend

Just when you think the Arthurian legend is passé, along comes Lev Grossman's wrist-breaking almost 700-page retelling.

- Ong Sor Fern

THE BRIGHT SWORD By Lev Grossman Del Rey/Paperback/674 pages/ $40.91

Closer to home, the Gardens by the Bay has also just opened its new Flower Dome attraction, Rose Romance, which recreates Wales' Caernarfon Castle, purportedly the location of the "real" Camelot.

Reports of King Arthur's death, it seems, have been greatly exaggerated.

Levity aside, the Arthurian legend is inextricably bound up with English culture and identity. Thanks to colonization, the myth has extended its reach beyond the British Isles.

American novelist Grossman, best known for his Magicians trilogy, a sort of adult Harry Potter spin, is not the first, and unlikely to be the last, to turn his hand to the beloved stories. He has spent a decade on The Bright Sword. And it is well worth the reader's investment of time and effort as the work is a marvellously modern and intensely lit-geeky deconstruction and reconstruction of the Arthurian legend.

Grossman has wisely decided to avoid the well-trodden ground covering Arthur's rise and fall. The Bright Sword is instead set in post-lapsarian Camelot and focuses on a ragtag bunch of secondary characters. The central protagonist is, of course, a young questing knight.