Following Spear and Legendborn, Bold as Love finishes book club's mini-season of Arthuriana. Though it won the Arthur C Clarke Award, Kate billed it as sci-fi but with enough ambiguity to count. Maybe it's because I don't read a lot of science fiction, but I couldn't wrap my head around the shape of the story. Things happened, characters wanted things, but I never had a sense of where the plot was heading or what would need to happen for Bold as Love to end. 

Though Gwyneth Jones’s central characters do map to the King Arthur legend, Bold as Love isn't particularly obvious about being influenced by the legends. Until 60 per cent of the way through the book, it’s entirely possible to miss or forget about the connection to Camelot. That said, the setting does feel disconnected enough from reality to be vaguely mythic, giving Bold as Love a sort of meandering dreamlike feel. Gwyneth Jones manages to tackle some deeply troubling topics without losing that, without feeling like she's visiting trauma on the reader in the way that some books do.

Fiorinda, Sage and Ax dominate the bulk of Bold as Love’s chapters. Fiorinda feels real immediately, in part because the book opens with her childhood and backstory. Ax and Sage are harder to get a handle on at first, but become increasingly solid as the story builds. While the cast of characters around them aren't terribly detailed, it’s not difficult to distinguish one from another, or to remember roughly which interest group each is attached to. 

That said, it’s hard to gauge how much impact the characters have on moving the plot forward without being able to pin down exactly what the plot is. There's little sense that any of the characters have an end goal beyond coping with the new world Gwyneth Jones has constructed around them. There are enjoyable moments of drama and tension, but actions and consequences remain nebulous throughout. 

Despite that, neither the reading experience nor the ending is unsatisfying. If you’re content to let yourself be taken along for the ride without a map, it’s an interesting journey.