Thomas D Lee delivered a strangely enjoyable debut with his book Perilous Times. That book was an environmental satire set in a not-too-distant future Britain and involved the resurrected Knights of the Round Table and a fairly obnoxious King Arthur. One of the premises of this book was that Merlin’s magic had allowed the knights to be resurrected at times when Britain was in need. They emerge from under the specially grown oak trees under which they had been originally buried, fully formed and ready to fight. When that book opened the knights had been doing this on and off for hundreds of years. With his new book The Knight Watch, Lee takes this premise back to World War 2, where, if anything, it works better.
A lengthy opening set in the 15th century and focusses on Isolde, who is an acolyte of a group of witches. Hoping to help her fellow acolytes, Isolde helps King Arthur and his men destroy the coven but three of witches escape, vowing revenge. Fast forward to World War 2 and the Knights (and Isolde who was buried with her lover Tristan and so also resurrects with him), have once again risen to help Britain in its fight with the Nazis. But the years have affected their relationships. Isolde wants nothing more to do with Tristan even though he still pines for her, Lancelot’s relationship with Galehaut is impacted by their different views on war, and the others still bicker with each other.
The knights are brought back together by their immortal handler and tasked with parachuting into France to recover a scientist called Nightingale. Nightingale is working with a special occult section of the German army to create a magic weapon. Thanks to Tristan, Isolde is pulled into this mission also. Before long they discover (unsurprising to the reader) that the surviving witches are behind everything and are finally ready to get their revenge.
If there is any quibble with The Knight Watch it is that Lee has too many point of view characters. While there are clearly main characters – Isolde, Tristan and Lancelot – many of the minor characters get chapters of their own. And while this gives those characters some depth it does make this book longer than it possibly needs to be. The dream sequences involving Tristan, Kay and Gawain while illuminating are particularly lengthy and ultimately make little difference to the overall plot.
Lee has drawn on plenty of influences for The Knight Watch. He obviously riffs on the tradition and stories of the Knights of the Round Table but he also draws on some of the classic World War 2 adventure stories like Where Eagles Dare and the Guns of Navarone. This enables him to deliver a rollicking adventure story with plenty of action and cliffhangers but also deeper questions about mortality. But this is also a book about acceptance and sexuality. Isolde finds herself falling into a relationship with a mortal woman, Lancelot and Galehaut’s relationship is well handled, and it turns out that one of the knights has transitioned. All of this is compassionately observed and underlined by Lee’s afterward which talks about the way that sexuality has been often whitewashed out of World War 2 narratives.
While this is a prequel (or sequel?) of sorts to Perilous Times, this series can really be read in any order. And there is a point where it is a suggested that this story may be on a completely different timeline (or branch of the world tree) from the later one. So despite any connections to Perilous Times, the The Knight Watch can absolutely be read as the weird, enjoyable, standalone Nazi-punching romp that Lee intended it to be.
The Knight Watch by Thomas D Lee
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