Rating: 
Summary: Mary Stewart didn't need pronography: Why does Jack Whyte?
Review: This book is enjoyable for the same reason that Mary Stewart's _Crystal Cave_ was. It presents Merlin as a real person, not a shadowy magician, and explores an estimation of the _real_ environment of King Arthur's world from Merlin's perspective. The first person narrative copies Stewart's approach, and works as well. Impressive historical setting and the rich description of late Roman Britain gives the story a depth not often found in the fantasy genre. The detailed ironmongery and militarist/feudal bent of the era are well captured, though a sense of how an agrarian economy supported all of these horsemen and warriors is missing. The book's major shortcoming is the pornographic detail of some wenching scenes. It is one thing to explain how carnal appetites were approached with both pre-Christian casualness and great gusto by young Brito-Roman aristocrats-- it is entirely unnecessary to the story to go into genital approach angles and a detailed accounting of who was licking whom. In contrast, a very tender erotic scene was drawn where Merlin and Cassandra first become intimate, and it was done without using pornographic detail. Perhaps by using the extreme contrast Whyte was illustrating with heavy quill the difference between lust and love. And there was a bit of psychobabble thrown in where Merlin goes into a four page digression that amounts to measuring manhood, literally, with Uther. Again, a far too heavy handed, and basically unnecessary tool for showing the differences in temperament between Uther and Merlin. Those weaknesses aside, the story is very readable, though only suitable for adult readers, due to the adult content of about fifteen pages of material. Better editing and less graphic language woud have made this a four or five star book. Of course, I will contiue enjoying the series, because old Britain fairly jumps off of the page and into my living room when I read it.
Rating: 
Summary: Continuing an excellent series
Review: This is the third volume of a superb series about the life and times of King Arthur from a historical perspective. Whyte's narration and writing style continue to be excellent. Was this the way things really happened? Did Merlyn (using Whyte's spelling) and Uther actually exist, and really live their lives as Whyte describes? We'll probably never know for sure, but Whyte certainly made me believe they could have. All of his characters are three-dimensional, flesh-and-blood people - and though I know how the story had to turn out (this is, after all, the story of Arthur), there were quite a few moments in this volume that took my breath away. At some points I honestly believed that Whyte was going to play some kind of dirty trick on me and veer off into an alternate universe. Along the way Whyte gives us several lessons in history and the religion of the time. I'm not enough of a scholar to know whether or not a debate such as the one he describes actually took place, but I certainly believed in his description of it. And he presents both sides of several religious arguments in a way such that any layman could understand them, without his (Whyte's) obviously taking one side or the other. My only complaint with this particular entry in the series is that Whyte doesn't really dig into the life, history, or personality of Lot of Cornwall. What little description he does give makes Lot out to be evil personified, but I really would have liked to learn more about what made this man tick. Unlike the first two, there is a little bit of "magic" in this volume, if you can call dreams magic. It seems that Whyte's Merlyn has a bit of precognition - his dreams accurately predict several events in the story. But there is no overt magic - nobody turns into a newt or anything else. I'm eagerly looking forward to volume four.
Rating:
Summary: Another Winner from Whyte
Review: Well, like Stephen Lawhead's series, this is Merlyn's book. Whyte is into book 3 and still cooken. All the Arther books view Merlyn or Merlin, or Merlen, (lets not get into the Welsh for Merlin) a little differently. Whyte view is interesting. A nice guy, a little know it all again, with some bad#@% powers. Fate deals him a bad hand and he really goes off the deep end. And here comes Arther (drum roll please). Now we have all the main players on stage...Jack, slow this baby down or you'll never hit book 30. Which reminds me, thats a 30...
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