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| Merlin Trilogy | 
 enlarge | Author: Mary Stewart
Publisher: William Morrow
Category: Book
List Price: £16.73
Buy New: £11.54
You Save: £5.19 (31%)
New (12) Used (6) from £11.31
Avg. Customer Rating:  21 reviews
Sales Rank: 13009
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 928
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.9
Dimensions (in): 9.5 x 6.5 x 1.9
ISBN: 0688003478
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9780688003470
Publication Date: November 1980
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: New book. WE USE PRIORITY AIRMAIL ONLY for books from the USA. UK & European delivery is 7-10 days. Over 2,000,000 books sold to Amazon customers
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| Customer Reviews:
| Showing reviews 1-5 of 21 | | NEXT » |
 Merlin Irritatus February 11, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
I am currently obsessed with Arthurian saga after reading the Mists Of Avalon, which, for those of you who are rolling your eyes as though i must be some soppy romantic or whining tedious feminist- is actually one the best best reads ever- first class: the book is popular for a reason.
The problem with this book from my point of view is that:
Mary Stewart has robbed this tale of all magick and msytery- offering a rational explanation for all those legendary events we had up till now understood were the enchantments of Merlin, Morgain, Arhtur and the magickal world they lived in, with the ancient Gods and Goddesses and the druids and the Faery races, and the whole reason that we, tens of hundreds of years later are still reading about Merlin, whoever he was...
...whoever he was being the most intriguing element of the legend indeed: was he as put by MZB and others- an arch druid, the mortal embodiment of the messenger of the Gods, or was he as others say, born of no mortal man, created by the Queen of the Faeries, to deliver Britain out of the claws of the Saxons amnd the Romans?
..or was Merlin born of a Roman and a princess, and an arrogant and irritating poncey little git who you really would like to give a slap: becuase that is how he comes across to me in this book. I am not able to sympathise with this character at all. I simply do not like him! Something about him is smarmy but I could put up with it if there was magick and intrigue in the story. But there isnt any, and this character Merlin sems to delight is dyspelling the myths with boring logical accounts at every turn, at one point Stewart seemed tempted to give us a physics lesson as to how Melrin took the stones from the heart of Ireland to the Hiants Dance- talk about killing joy. Aaaagh! The nearest you get to magick is when he crawls into a razor sharp ledge in a cave and has a vision. Whoopy do. Any amateur psychologist can tell you that these vision whilst they often are glimpses of the possible future (quantum mechanics tells us that there is no definate future- or even past- everything exists in a state of possibilities)- are not magcikal at all but just messages from the subconcious. In those days people without the distracions of every fday life such as we have now we far more open to receiving and noticing these messages from the deep mind that we all get.
I cant be bothered to rant: all i will say is read the mists of avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley after you read this and you will knwo what i am talking about.
This book is well written, her descriptions are beautiful, but the magick is lost, and Merlin is one of those smug geek types that everyone hates- not a nice geek or a quiet geek- i love people like that- but one of those obnoxious ones. I want him to get a kicking of someone.
thats all.
merlin trilogies October 9, 2007
The second best merlin books, very discriptive and magical, i am really into the melin legend and really thought these books brought it into life, this has the value of them all being together in one book so you don't have to wait until you get the next book, escapism at it's best.
 Good read September 4, 2007
It's got to be a good 25-30 years since I read these three books, and were just as enjoyable now as they were then. Stuart has a lovely way of describing a scene, the land and the people. If you purchased the trilogy in one book, just remember that they were originally three separate books. I found that while I read it as one book this time, there were redundancies and/or things that I would have expected to be cut from one large novel, but necessary additions in three separate novels. I found myself skipping through those sections.
You won't find any great surprises in the story, if you are familiar with the legends of King Arthur. This story is mainly Merlin's from boyhood to old man and beloved cousin and counselor of Arthur. While I don't usually enjoy a book written in the first person -- as you lose so much from what the other characters are experiencing -- the author pulled this off well enough. With Merlin's visions, we were able to see happenings that were not personally witnessed by Merlin.
Of the books I have read so far on the Arthurian legends, my favorite is still The Road to Avalon, followed by Queen of Camelot. It's been so many years since I've read The Mists of Avalon I can't rate that amongst these until I've read it again.
All in all very enjoyable and I would recommend this for younger readers whose parents are trying to find well written books without the constant presence of bodice ripping.
A thumbs down to the publisher, I found many small typos that became a bit irritating after a while, i.e. women instead of woven, is instead of in, etc. You would think that after the first publication they would catch these and fix them for subsequent pulications.
Truly Magical December 22, 2005
14 out of 14 found this review helpful
I've read the Merlin Trilogy by Mary Stewart many times over the years and have always found it magical and truly enchanting. Mary Stewart has woven a "realistic" tapestry of dark age Britain using Merlin as the central character to tell most of the Arthurian saga from adifferent point of view. Was Merlin a magician? Perhaps, but he was more than that; a doctor, engineer, philosopher and creator of a future. All this could seem like magic to early britains and Mary Stewart does indeed give Merlin some real magic. Above all else, this is a romantic story, the story of a boy searching initially for his father and in doing so becoming entangled in a story bigger than himself, bigger than his desires and as big as the landscape Stewart weaves. Get it, read it, love it... I guarantee you will return to it again and again.
Revisiting an old friend February 13, 2004
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
I have read and reread this story more times than I can count. I came across a very old and tattered copy ( of the Crystal Cave) today when I was clearing some junk in the loft. It was wonderful to enter the Crystal Cave again after an absence of several years and to find that the magic has not diminished with too many years.
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