The Nature of Things

"The essence of wisdom is to know when to be doing, and when it's useless even to try."   -   Mary Stewart in The Last Enchantment Seldom in Mary Stewart's telling of the Arthurian legend has it been useless for Merlin to try to affect events, and never when he's tried has he failed. But in this third installment of her series, Merlin is winding down. He feels his powers waning and longs to be able to pass off those powers to a worthy successor. Fortuitously, he finds such a successor - a most surprising successor. Or perhaps the successor was brought to him by his god, even though Merlin had believed that the god had withdrawn his hand from his life. This story, as in the two previous books, is once again told entirely in Merlin's voice, and after a while that makes for a pretty static narrative even when he is describing very active events. Arthur, in Merlin's telling, is never less than virtuous, honorable, magnanimous, and noble. Most of the men in his...

The Hollow Hills by Mary Stewart My rating: 4 of 5 stars I have set myself the goal of reading Mary Stewart's Arthurian Saga series this summer. This is the second book in that series. Once again we see events through the eyes of Merlin the Enchanter, as he narrates the story for us. We begin with Merlin traveling through the Mediterranean area after having safely delivered the baby Arthur into the keeping of those who will protect and raise him over the next several years. When Arthur is six years old, Merlin feels the call to return to England and to take up his own task of teaching and protecting the child. He finds Arthur strong and healthy and growing into the kind of human being that he had hoped to see; the kind of man who can be a brave, just, and benevolent king. The story of Arthur is so well-known, so ingrained in our cultural consciousness, that it seems pointless to spend space here on exposition. Stewart has taken those well-known facts, both historical and legendary...

The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart My rating: 4 of 5 stars I had my Arthurian period like many readers. There was a time when I found the legends of King Arthur, the Knights of the Round Table, and Merlin irresistible. The period when I was most susceptible to these stories happened to coincide with the time of greatest popularity of the Lerner and Lowe musical adaptation of them, known as Camelot. Come to think of it, maybe that wasn't a coincidence. How I loved that musical! At any rate, it had been a number of years since I paid a visit to Camelot, but when Mary Stewart's The Crystal Cave was recommended to me, I was intrigued. In spite of the reading I had done concerning the legends, I had never read Stewart's work. Obviously, that was a serious oversight on my part. Stewart was an excellent writer and she pulls together all the threads of the Merlin origination story and weaves them into a page turner of a tale. Merlin was the bastard child of a Welsh princess. His m...