Rating: 
Summary: Dissapointing
Review: Let me preface this review by stating that I'm a conservative, yet open-minded Christian thinker.
I read this book after reading rave reviews of it's deep allegory expecting a journey much like Dante's or even "Le Petit Prince". What I discovered was blatant Christian dogma thinly disguised by a journey through a fake world of good and evil.
This book started with some promise, even being close to the allegory that it claimed to be for the first couple chapters. Soon it began degenerating into obvious Christian lessons. By the end of the book, Mr. Ellis was practically spoon-feeding you Christian ideas with no insight. What should have been the climactic discovery in the Castle of Wisdom turned out to be some paraphrased chapters from the Bible's 'Song of Solomon' and 'Ecclesiastes'.
For those of you that believe this book is only for the intelligentsia, you're kidding yourself. Any intelligent person will be instantly insulted by the transparent and sickeningly simple arguments against evolution and homosexuality in the book. Likewise, the author suspends all belief for a few pages when the hero suddenly arrives in a secluded town that makes use of all of today's modern technology, including phones, televisions, and movie theaters when no other city he has visited in the civilized world even has electricity. He uses these few pages to take a quick jab at technology and the disconnected people that use it. At the same time, children growing up in tribal villages hunt their food with spears, tell stories around a bonfire, and understand molecular structure. Silly? I agree.
Even the author's writing style is questionable. I would not be surprised to find that this was written by a thirteen year-old. It was an easy read, but something about the word choice and sentence structure felt very immature.
The book does have some merit. I must say that Castle of Wisdom is a short, and mostly enjoyable read. The protagonist experiences a lot in life, akin to W. Somerset Maugham's "Of Human Bondage", which bestows much more wisdom than that found in the castle.
If you're trying to decide if you want to spend your hard-earned cash on it or not... I'd recommend skipping it. It might be worth checking out from a library if you can find it, but it's certainly not a literary classic you will cherish.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting About Castle of Wisdom
Review: The interesting thing about Castle of Wisdom is the symbolism. At once the story is action packed, full of romance, mysterious, etc., but the story reveals its true depths in its symbolism.The story begins with a young man sitting beside a stream, looking at a blade of grass. The grass is sharp on the edges but soft in the middle-- so already from the outset we know the main character is contemplating his own person (sharp on the edges, soft in the middle). The young man thinks that he would like to know the meaning of all existence-- not just the meaning of life, but the meaning of absolutely everything. He wants to know WHY! At the urging of a village elder, the young man leaves his village to search for the Castle of Wisdom, where he believes he will learn the final and most important truth of all. What a journey he has-- it makes for a great read. But again, the true meaning of the story is found in the beautiful symbolism.
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