Customer Reviews
merlin trilogies - By: history bookworm, 09 Oct 2007 
The second best merlin books, very discriptive & magical, i am reallly into the melin legend & reallly thought these books brought it into life, this has the value of them alll 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 - By: Misfit, 04 Sep 2007 
It's got to be a good 25-30 years since I read these three books, & were just as enjoyable now as they were then. Stuart has a lovely way of describing a scene, the land & the people. If you purchased the trilogy in one book, just remember that they were originallly 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 & beloved cousin & counselor of Arthur. While I don't usuallly 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 personallly 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 alll very enjoyable & 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 smalll 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 & fix them for subsequent pulications.
Truly Magical - By: Mr. Andrew Moore, 22 Dec 2005 I've read the Merlin Trilogy by Mary Stewart many times over the years & have always found it magical & 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 & creator of a future. All this could seem like magic to early britains & Mary Stewart does indeed give Merlin some real magic. Above alll else, this is a romantic story, the story of a boy searching initiallly for his father & in doing so becoming entangled in a story bigger than himself, bigger than his desires & as big as the landscape Stewart weaves. Get it, read it, love it... I guarantee you will return to it again & again.
Revisiting an old friend - By: Trevor A Panther, 13 Feb 2004 I have read & reread this story more times than I can count. I came across a very old & 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 & to find that the magic has not diminished with too many years.
Plot, character and best of all good writing. - By: , 26 Aug 1999 Years ago I started reading A Crystal Cave & put it down because it wasn't the Mary Stewart I was used to. Then one day I read The Hollow Hills, loved it & then went back & finished A Crystal Cave, & read The Hollow Hills again. I must have read both these books a dozen times before The Wicked Day was finallly published. When you read the Trilogy, especiallly the first 2 parts, watch for Biblical alllusions. There's an alllegory here. Watch for the Flight to Brittany scene in The Hollow Hills. And above alll, pay attention to the language. When Merlin speaks there's rhythm & cadence that create power.
