Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
Rider & Co (1995), Paperback, 448 pages
Description
The author of the million-copy best-sellerAgeless Body, Timeless Mindemerges as a powerful new force in fiction with a luminously written novel about the final act of the Arthurian legend playing out in modern England.The Return of Merlinis a brilliantly realized narrative that begins in Arthurian times and jumps boldly to our own 20th-century dark age of war, pollution, predation, and hatred--with a message of hope.
User reviews
LibraryThing member acrimonious
Pretty good, I never actually finnished this one. I found this book well writen, with good characters and plot. A little slow moving.
LibraryThing member LibraryLou
This book stuck in my memory, an enjoyable holiday read
LibraryThing member juniperSun
Like a continuation of TS White's Once And Future King. What is this world coming to?
LibraryThing member librisissimo
Not too bad, as a novel. Too much "meaningful symbolism", but actually an OK story.
LibraryThing member goosecap
It’s kind of a new age adventure and not an action-adventure, (not that I like television), so it’s a little slow, but you (or I, lol) have to love a novel where the author hints at what the symbolism means for at least some of the chapters (in the prologue).
The world is as you see it, as
Re: Merlin, I’m not quite as committed to pacifism as I am to other things—the fights you can get into, in this war against war!—but it’s nice to have children and magic and older people and ancient lore and cops & kingsmen & kingswomen and old stories & themes and drawing the past into the present and all that, without so much the technology and technical aspects of driving swords through chain mail, although there is a sword. (There is a troubled child as well as the more idealistic children, and the troubled child with troubled parents gets the sword. There’s this great passage about unearned grace where this kid who hasn’t done anything right feels the love and acceptance of the universe just because he exists and is there to love and accept.) Also, although he de-demonizes the magic man and reconciles him with heaven, he also recognizes that there is this shadow man, who is also very much this magical man.
But the best part for me was the Jamaican character (it’s set in late 20th century England, so there’s a woman cop and a working-class Jamaican man and so on), the Black mythology, which becomes critical to the plot events at the time of the climax crisis. You have to decide if hatred is part of the objective world, or part of how you see it.
The world is as you see it, as
Show More
Deepak says. In a way that’s true; for example I myself was para-alcoholic angry at someone the other day for doing something that was only marginally disruptive, but it triggered associations for me; eventually the anger attack passed (no one knew, except me and my priest, lol), and then ironically she did something really fucking dumb to me (although legal), and I was just able to react practically instead of reenacting World War III, you know, since I’d done that already and it’s not something I like. There’s nothing objectively offensive or praise-worthy; the world is as you see it. Re: Merlin, I’m not quite as committed to pacifism as I am to other things—the fights you can get into, in this war against war!—but it’s nice to have children and magic and older people and ancient lore and cops & kingsmen & kingswomen and old stories & themes and drawing the past into the present and all that, without so much the technology and technical aspects of driving swords through chain mail, although there is a sword. (There is a troubled child as well as the more idealistic children, and the troubled child with troubled parents gets the sword. There’s this great passage about unearned grace where this kid who hasn’t done anything right feels the love and acceptance of the universe just because he exists and is there to love and accept.) Also, although he de-demonizes the magic man and reconciles him with heaven, he also recognizes that there is this shadow man, who is also very much this magical man.
But the best part for me was the Jamaican character (it’s set in late 20th century England, so there’s a woman cop and a working-class Jamaican man and so on), the Black mythology, which becomes critical to the plot events at the time of the climax crisis. You have to decide if hatred is part of the objective world, or part of how you see it.
Show Less
Subjects
Language
Original publication date
1995
Physical description
448 p.
ISBN
071267666X / 9780712676663
Local notes
A reworking of the classic Merlin Myth based in the modern era. It examines all the circumstances surrounding the re-emergence of such elements as the sword, the sorcerer's stone and the Old Queen in modern-day England.