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Liked It “totally completes the once and future king saga. should be read together.” see full review » see other reviews » |
Didn’t Like It “King Arthur is standing before his final battle. He's old and fragile. Merlyn comes to visit him and shows him the wrong of war and deferent between animals and humans by turning him into an ant and a goose. |
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“totally completes the once and future king saga. should be read together.”
ten s wrote this review 3 weeks ago. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
0 of 1 members found this review helpful“Merlin had a life too! Who knew? ”
Carol M wrote this review Thursday, July 9 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No“The book opens as King Arthur prepares himself for his final battle. Merlyn reappears to complete Arthur's education and discover the cause of wars. As he did in The Sword in the Stone, Merlyn again demonstrates ethics and politics to Arthur by transforming him into various animals.
Wendy B wrote this review Friday, April 24 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
The last chapter of the book takes place only hours before the final battle between King Arthur and his son and nephew Mordred. Arthur does not want to fight after everything that he has learned from Merlyn. He makes a deal with Mordred to split England in half. Mordred accepts. During the making of this deal, a snake comes upon one of Mordred's soldiers. The soldier draws his sword. The opposing side, unaware of the snake, takes this as an act of betrayal. Arthur's troops attack Mordred's, and both Arthur and Mordred die in the battle that follows.
Guenever joins a convent, and remains there till death. Lancelot becomes a hermit and dies a hermit. His last miracle was making the room that he died in smell like heaven.
”“This was the final tirade, too stiff for publishers to accept during the War. Several bits, too good to pass up, were shuffled into the previous four books for the collection as The Once And Future King. The series as a whole benefits from the original conclusion, even if it is — still — a bit stiff. For graduates of the earlier work only.”
Brian M wrote this review Wednesday, March 4 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No“King Arthur is standing before his final battle. He's old and fragile. Merlyn comes to visit him and shows him the wrong of war and deferent between animals and humans by turning him into an ant and a goose.
Monique wrote this review Wednesday, July 23 2008. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
I didn't like this book. It was to thick and dull. I do understand what Merlyns intentions was by showing the live of animal in the opposite of human, but I didn't like the way it was written, while I loved his 'The Once and Future King'. I expected more from the book and can't say I would call it a fairy tale.
Read for TittM: Fairy Tales”
3 of 3 members found this review helpful“Overly didactic and rightly cut from "The Once and Future King" (although much of it finds its way that wondrous book), it's still a powerful pacifist work.”
Lord Manleigh wrote this review Sunday, April 20 2008. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“As good as The Once and Future King is, The Book of Merlyn is better. Both are must-reads. ”
Amanda L wrote this review Wednesday, February 20 2008. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“After writing, individually, the four parts of his novel, "The Once and Future King," T.H. White wrote a concluding fifth part in which Merlyn revisits his former pupil on the eve of Arthur's final battle with Mordred (where book 4 of "Once and Future King" ends). He envisioned the novel coming full circle with Merlyn once again changing Arthur into animals - notably an ant and a goose - for his final lessons on human nature and the evil of war. However the publishers did not include this final chapter, which was only finally edited and published in the 1980's.
James B wrote this review Sunday, December 23 2007. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
White's meditations on the nature of war are more blunt in this volume than in what was actually published as "Once and Future King." The work is quite thoughtful and Arthur in the ant colony, as a metaphor for the collectivist state and Arthur among the geese, as a metaphor for unrestricted individualism are some of the most compelling and wonderfully written portions of White's Arthurian saga. White argues that the key to peace requires and protection of individualism and private ownership, but abandoning communal ownership, collectivism, and nationalism. He states peace requires that we, "abolish such things as tariff barriers, passports and immigration laws, converting mankind into a federation of individuals. In fact you must abolish nations, and...states also; Indeed you must tolerate no unit larger than the family... In the course of a thousand years we should hope to have a common language if we were lucky, but the main thing is that we must make it possible for a man living at Stonehenge to pack up his traps overnight and to seek his fortune without hindrance in Timbuktu." Writing in 1941, White has presciently described Tom Friedman's flat world (see my review of "The World is Flat") and has concurred that global commerce cans serve as a force for prosperity and peace.
Although both entertaining and thought-provoking, ultimately White's publisher did him a favour leaving this coda out of "The Once and Future King." There is almost no narrative to the Book of Merlyn, with the vast majority of the work consisting of a lecture from Merlyn to Arthur and the details of Arthur's final encounter with Mordred and the late arrival of Lancelot (who was returning to England at the end of "Once and Future King") a mere afterthought. To have included it would have been incongruent with the rest of the novel. Why would Merlyn, who lives backwards and remembers the future, not teach this important lesson to Arthur early in his life? Throughout "Once and Future King," Merlyn makes it a point not to give Arthur the answers, but to make him think them out for himself, why then would he lecture the King at the end? The brilliantly written passages when Arthur was turned into an ant and later into a goose were re-worked for the final 1958, "Once and Future King," and placed in Book 1 ("The Sword in the Stone,") as part of Arthur's boyhood education. This is a more logical place for these passages, giving Arthur and the reader, these metaphors to contemplate as he struggles first to make Might a force for Right and later to abolish it altogether. Worse, had the volume concluded with "The Book of Merlyn," it would have lost all of its philosophical force. The power of "Once in Future King," lies in the ability of the reader to digest the meaning of the animal metaphors as Arthur does rather than have a blunt summary explanation. Reading the "Book of Merlyn," is rather like having a joke ruined by having it explained to you.”“A truly wonderful version of the Arthurian legends. I can't recommend this highly enough -- it starts out a children's tale, then turns into a story for grown ups. Just great.”
spock627corfu wrote this review Saturday, December 22 2007. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“My wonderful wife Karen found this book for me in an old used book store after I finished The Once and Future King. She stumbled upon it and bought it for me. It was the perfect ending to a perfect book. ”
Dan Bell wrote this review Friday, December 7 2007. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
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