King of the Scepter'd Isle

Michael Greatrex Coney's book is an interesting concept, but somewhat dry in the reading. It's the fourth in a series, but fortunately the previous three books don't seem to be essential to getting the story. It's a take on the Arthurian legend, where Merlin and... I've forgotten the character's name - roam about England telling stories about Arthur and the Round Table and so on; stories so real that the audience feels like they are right in the story. There are also 'happentracks', basically parallel universes that converge and diverge through time. There are also a sort of supreme being, who manipulate or guide events along particular happentracks. There's gnomes, too, and gnome-human relations, and robots and interstellar grasshoppers.

These are all the ingredients of a fabulous story, but I found it sort of limp to read.