... Hello Mordred, why are you not called Mordred?

No seriously. This is just basically going "I wanna use the Mordred and Morgause/Morgana plot line" and fitting it in. Not saying that that couldn't work - make Morgause the steward instead of the half sister? Yes. Awesome. But why isn't Rhian just called Mordred?? Mordred doesn't exist in that world, so the characters wouldn't be flagged, and if the author wanted to dupe the audience ... maybe mention Rhian is a fake name at the end? And Merlin wasn't suspicious ... ?

There is a lot that just makes me go "this could have been done a little better". The idea isn't bad, and some moments were great. But the plot just was so obviously Mordred based, and the author usually acknowledges the real world source material and in this case ... did not. It annoyed me.

Also, I entirely forgot about Hort, but he quickly became one of my favourite characters and I know he's with Nicola (who's cool) but I still think he should be with Sophie. I mean ... he is what she needs. He'll tolerate her to a certain extent, but he does know when to stop her. Honestly, a little more confidence and he's golden.

Anyways. I don't think past the original trilogy should really be happening, and I wasn't overly thrilled with this, but it wasn't bad enough to dissuade me from reading the next one.