Rating: 
Summary: A little longer than necessary
Review: T.H. White's The Once and Future King gets two stars and I rate it just average. While the book did have many different strengths, overall, it was just too long and contained way too much descriptive "filler" and "fluff." The strengths of the book include good character description and variations, solid humor (especially those parts with Sir Grummore and King Pellinore)and compelling scenes of treachery, action and love. Most of the action took place in Books 2-4, when the Wart becomes King Arthur and creates the Round Table, and also when Mordred declares himself the King of England. I particularly enjoyed the scenes in which Lancelot and Guenever are together, because you could almost feel the romantic tension between them. However, the quality of the read was really impacted negatively by the seemingly endless pages of descriptive commentary. For some reason, White thought that readers could stay interested through these long trips that basically lead the reader nowhere. For example, White could not hold my interest as he described (at incredibly great length)the color of an insect on a tulip in the field behind where the main scene is taking place. I wanted to scream: "Get to the point! Get back to the action!" And the worst part is, this desriptive commentary makes up about 1/3 to 1/2 of the book. If White cut out even half of all this description, it would make the book a much more enjoyable read, and much easier to comprehend. For me, reading The Once and Future King was sometimes a painful experience, as I waded through the 600+ pages. In conclusion, if you are the sort of person who enjoys reading an intricate level of detail and description (poetry, really) and you don't mind it taking pages and pages of print to get to any action, then this would be a great read for you. Otherwise, I would steer clear of this book...or just skim through the "fluff" and find the main action (and more interesting) parts of this book.
Rating: 
Summary: It will keep you wanting more.
Review: The Once and Future King is by far one of the best books i have ever read. I was assigned this book as a summer reading book, when I first bought the book I was scared by just looking at the size of it. The first book The Sword in the Stone is about Wart and his adventures with Merlyn, animals like ants, fish, and owl's. The story goes off on tangents occasionally but most of them are pretty interesting and have famous characters like Robin Hood. Books 2,3, and 4 all deal with Arthur growing up to be King and Lancelot becoming the greatest knight of all time. It tells the story of Arthur's rise and fall of his Kingdom. If you enjoy the Arthurian legend or if you just want a great fantasy story than you should read this.
Final Note:
Pellinore owns everyone in the story, what, what?
JHS forever.
Rating:
Summary: Around 300 pages too long
Review: The Once and Future King had many strengths, and it would be a good book except for the one major weakness that i noticed. I feel T.H. White did a good job with the chracters in the book, keeping them close to traditional Arthurian style. The book has many intriguing scenes filled with action, treachery, humor, and love. Now, one would think, based on the review i have given so far, that The Once and Future King is a fine read, but the one weakness that i felt the book had makes the book difficult to enjoy and hard to pay attention to. T.H. White added far too much meaningless commentary and description inbetween the interesting scenes. This made the book quite uninteresting and and, after the loss of interest, hard to follow and comprehend. And, unfortunately for me, almost half the book is made up of this miniscule description. Seeing as i am not an avid reader to begin with, this book made reading less appealing to me than it already was. Concluding, i would recommend this book to readers who enjoy reading 300 pages of wandering commentary, and 300 pages of the actual relevant story. I definitely would not recommend this story to those who dislike reading unless it is packed with action from cover to cover.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Book
Review: The Once and Future King is the well-known novel of the legendary King Arthur. T.H. White presents in vivid detail the beauty of the Middle Ages and the exigent lives of brave knights living through a score of battles and wars. In the first book of four aptly named, "The Sword In The Stone," Arthur meets Merlyn, the magician, who transforms him into many beasts. From the first page to the last page, the plot thickens and the story of King Arthur and The Knights of the Round Table unfolds. If you want to discover more about Lancelot, the most skilled knight of his time, and Queen Guenever, King Arthur's wife, this is the book for you. The Once and Future King was one of the best, and longest books I have ever read, but I thoroughly enjoyed every page. If you decide to read this book, do not be deterred by its amount of pages or T.H. White's lengthy descriptions.
Rating: 
Summary: short of what could be
Review: argh! argh!
ARGH! ARGH!
To begin: I suppose you should be aware that I was so kindly forced to read this book over the summer for an English class, so my negative feelings could be an offshoot of that.
I found the slapstick humor not funny, and be warned it is laced throughout the entire first book. (this being a collection of 4 books)
White seems enjoy going out on weird whims and throws in many characters, like robin hood, that just don't make sense.
I suppose for this book would be a fine read for a younger audience, but then why is my teacher giving this book to a senior? Anyway I would recommend any number of the Arthurian books that are more loyal to the style and setting of Arthur.
Rating: 
Summary: Hard to get into, great once in captures you
Review: This novel is a must-read for anyone interested in classic versions of the King Arthur legend--and anyone simply interested in reading a fantasy story with all the best: delightful humor, grand quests, riviting intrigue, . . . everything. Now I'm not saying it's the best book in the world. At first I was totally confused, seeing as the book just drops you into the middle England back in who-knows-when, and seems to expect you to understand everything about it from the social structure to the specifics of hawking. After a while though, I came to really enjoy it. And one other thing . . . King Pellinore is THE BEST CHARARCTER EVER. *blink* "what what?!" Nevermind, you would have to read it, but I love that guy.
Rating:
Summary: overrated
Review: Don't get me wrong, this is a really good book and I enjoyed it thouroughly.. I just don't believe it's the masterpiece that some people put it out to be. It's a classic fantasy epic that could also be called a fantasy biography, because it tracks most of Arthur's life in his time.
It advertises as a fantasy, but mainly, it isn't. It's historical fiction to be honest, and I was simply expecting something different.
Rating:
Summary: The Once and Future King: A book for Fantasy Games Players
Review: The novel, The Once and Future King, is a unique combination of four books. All of the stories in the book are about King Arthur. Book I is about Wart, who later becomes Arthur, and who lives with his foster father Sir Ector in a palace. Merlyn tutors and teaches Arthur about the world by turning him into various animals. When Uther Pendragon, the king of England dies, they are forced to have a contest to find the heir to the throne.In book II, Arthur has to battle against the Gaelic Kings. One of the kings he must battle is King Lot, one of Arthur's fierce rivals. Arthur establishes a group of Knights to protect the Kingdom and to fight for all that is right and grand. These Knights come to be known as the Knights of the Roundtable. Arthur also receives news of the Orkney fation from which he will have to save his kingdom. They had vowed revenge against the Pendragon line, which directly affects England. The focus is on Sir Lancelot in books number III and IV. Lancelot is just a young boy in the beginning, but he eventually becomes Arthur's' best Knight and friend. Sir Lancelot attempts to find the Holy Grail and he later has an affair with Guenever, Arthur's Queen. The affair hurts King Arthur deeply and Sir Lancelot must find a way to rectify it. I thought that the book was pretty interesting at times. I found the main problem I had with the book was in following the plot line. I really had to pay attention to it. There are a lot of characters and a lot of scenes change. You may have to read certain passages over in order to fully understand everything. I really enjoyed the book because of the excitement I felt. The book was filled with lots of really good action. The book was definitely way above average and I would give it about four stars out of five. Due to the type of details in the book, I think it would be unsuitable for anyone under the age of thirteen. With all of the magic and the violence, it would probably suite the people who play adventure video games. But if you like action, and you like adventurous magic, you will love the book.
Rating:
Summary: The Once and Future King: A Wandering of Words
Review: The Once and Future King: A Wandering of Words
Have you ever wondered what the lives of the great heroes of Camelot were like? If so, then The Once and Future King is a novel worth you time. The author, T.H. White, writes of King Arthur's childhood and his life as the King of England. The novel depicts the famous Round Table and some of the lives of the knights who served it. It shows the problems many of them faced. King Arthur trying to keep his kingdom together and establish Right by using Might. Or the infamous love affair between the King's most trusted knight Sir Lancelot and the Queen, fair Guenever.
I'm going to cut to the chase here and tell you some of the strengths and weaknesses of this novel. First, if someone were to go through the book and cut out at least fifty pages of wandering commentary, I would think very highly of it. It seems to me that T.H. White was a very distracted author who liked to get off on tangents. Whether or not these wanderings were relevant to the story or not, I think they dramatically take away from the reading. Second, the story went on and on with little to punctuate it. Action was scarce, and not very good. Then T.H. White went ahead and wrote the largest section of the book about a love affair. Although between the wandering words and the mushy love affair, the story was very good and had a lot of historical facts.
If you like informative, classical romance stories taking place in the Dark Ages of England, you just might like this novel. Although the story tends to wander and many areas are rather slow, the overall reading is a good experience. The wording can be difficult at times, and the story is often hard to follow, so I wouldn't suggest this book to younger or inexperienced readers. But most any high school student or some younger more advanced readers should be capable of reading his novel and enjoying it.
Rating:
Summary: Once and Future King
Review: When reading Once and Future King, by T.H. White, I could not wait until I was finally done with the book. This is a fantasy tale about a young boy who turns into a legendary King and changes the way this medieval fantasy world works forever. This entire novel is littered with long conversations using tricky dialogue and making the reader guess at who is talking to who. When you pick this book up and look at it, you will imagine it to be a strong fantasy tale with lots of magic and swords, but it turns out to be a fantasy tale about politics and alliances. Only in the beginning is there much use of magic, it slowly turns into a talk-fest.
In the beginning of the book, you get to go through the exciting phases of the main characters life. He slowly grows up, meet's Merlin the wizard and becomes his pupil, learning the lessons of life through magical and fun ways. As he gets older, Wart goes to a jousting tournament in London and is told the story of the Sword in the Stone. Wart gets lost during their movement through London and stumbles upon the famous sword, Excalibur, in the stone in front of a church. He pulls it out and becomes the legendary King Arthur. From this point on, the book basically went downhill for me. It began a series of chapters that were all about politics and little sword fighting and other fantasy type things. There are a few fights thrown in to spice it up every now and then, but it is basically all about the changing of a government. When I read a fantasy book, I expect lots of magic and mythical types of events to happen.
Another habit this book seems to have is the constant confusing dialogue between characters. Throughout the chapters, out of every single conversation I can remember, there is not one that has names to identify the speaker, except at the very end, or maybe very beginning of the conversation. This can be very confusing at times and you can get quite lost in what you are ready, having to go back a couple of pages to realize what just happened. If the author had done the easy task of adding identifying names to the dialogue, it would have made it much simpler to read and comprehend.
In the end, I did enjoy this book a bit, but I think it could have been written much better than it is currently. I had to re-read many areas of the book to understand them and connect them to other parts, but I did understand it in the end. If you're a true fantasy fan, I suggest you go read a book such as The Lord of the Rings series, but if you like politics mixed into your fantasy, Once and Future King is the way to go.
|
