May Earth Rise is the fourth novel in Holly Taylor’s Dreamer’s Cycle. This series combines Celtic myth and the Arthurian legend together along with magic and some romance to create and interesting storyline. Now I had not read any of the previous books in the series but the storyline sounded intriguing. And I have to say that this turned out to be a surprisingly good book. As a warning spoilers may follow below so be warned! I’ll keep the major ones secret though.

The novel starts off in the thick of a bad situation for Arthur ap Uther who recently lost the majority of his magical fighting force, the Y Dawnus, to Warleader Havgan who is hellbent on capturing Arthur’s land at all costs. Along with the conquest of Kymri, Havgan along with his witch hunters the wyrce-jaga are working to eliminate the magic users whom they deemed against their religion. With his most trusted friends, Arthur has to come up with a battle plan in order to gain the upper hand.

Having not read any of the previous novels, it was a bit confusing in the beginning as Taylor tends to list the characters with their full names, and it’s a bit tricky to keep track of some of them. However you do begin to pick out all of the usual Arthurian characters and that helps out a lot. In general the storyline is interesting and is a great re-imagining of the Arthurian legend and Taylor has breathed new life into these characters.

There are also some great plot twists in the novel between the conflict with Havgan and the Kymri as well as some love affairs that seem to pop up like wildflowers. That would actually be my only gripe regarding the book is that it seemed every few pages there was another romantic encounter or someone declaring love or another. For the most part it worked with the story, it just felt too frequent to me. And as promised I won’t mention the big plot twist, but I have to say that it leaves the story open ended enough that Taylor can take it into interesting waters in the future.

All in all I really enjoyed May Earth Rise, so much so that I plan on going back and reading the three previous books. I think that it’s a great read for those who are interested in fantasy and especially to those who like reading re-imagined stories!

Review product provided by Medallion Press, and does not affect the outcome of this review.

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