Prince Valiant, Vol. 2: 1939-1940

Lovely as usual - and these (huge) books let you see the art very clearly. Val is, here, a young idiot. First story - completing one begun in the first volume - Val is a squire, discovers a Saxon fleet, and is allowed to present his plan for dealing with them. Plan is a success, and Val is knighted

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on the field. Next he and his people go back to Thule, and his father regains the throne; Val gets tangled in his first(?) unwanted wooing, and straightens out the mess by (accurately) describing his perfect life of being a wandering knight and traveling from battle to battle. Then he rides off to do just that. On the way, he enters Time's cave for the first time. He goes to Andelkrag, where...they're just the sort of idiots he is. If they'd preserved their food just a little - one or two days more - the siege might have been lifted before they all died. Bah. Val survives, obviously, and rides off deeply impressed with these idiots. He collects Slith - by "calmly drowning" the young thief, before he gets curious and revives him. A long story of the Hun-Hunters, with an interlude of freeing the city of Pandaris and its rightful ruler. When the Hun-Hunters have done their job, Val, Gawain, and Tristram ride off. Val encounters a giant, and makes peace with him and his coterie of misfits. They collect a jewel merchant and help him, and Val gets his necklace that's charmed so that the wearer can never be bound with chains. They go to Rome, and between Gawain's inappropriate wooing and the Emperor's assassins, they leave in a hurry and with enemies on their trail. So the three knights split up; Val heads south. A short visit to the crater of Vesuvius, then he buys passage on a small ship - and shows his purse, unwisely. It ends up with Val in (untutored) command of the ship - and the book ends with the ship running before a screaming gale.

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