King of the Middle March

Rating:
Summary: Almost amazing
Review: All three of the books are very good. The overall story is great. It is mainly for young teens and older kids. The decriptions and the characters are good. It is a shame though that the ending of the third and final book is not so good. It doesn't tellyou enough and leaves you wanting to know the rest. But there is not another book. If you like medieval and magic you will like this. Not the best book of the year but i would recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: Not the same as the first...
Review: I was very excited to read the final book in the trilogy, only to be disappointed. The story didn't keep my attention, but I kept going because I wanted to see what would happen to the characters. The ending wasn't horrible but, I was left with questions. I want to know what will happen to Serle and will Arthur ever see Gatty again? Will Arthur marry Winnie? Everything felt rushed. I don't think Crossley-Holland took the time he should have to end the trilogy. And did anybody else notice that the first book was actually quite funny, while the other two were not?

Rating:
Summary: Middling "March"
Review: Kevin Crossley-Holland ends his Arthur Trilogy with "King of the Middle March," an inventive yet extremely boring mixture of the Crusades and Arthurian fiction. Somehow the story never quite gels together, and Crossley-Holland's spare prose doesn't cover those flaws.

Arthur de Caldicot has become a knight, and is now engaged to Winnie. Now he ends up in Venice in preparation for the retaking of Jerusalem, still keeping his "seeing stone" and thinking of his mentor Merlin. But things take a nasty turn when Arthur learns that the Saracens are not bloodthirsty barbarians, but intelligent and cultured.

Disillusioned, Arthur is repulsed by the horrors around him -- including Christians fighting one another. And when Lord Stephen is wounded, Arthur is able to go back to England with him, which is where he belongs. With the aid of his seeing stone, Arthur is able to find the final answers of his life and his fragmented family.

The fundamental flaw of "King of the Middle-March" is the same as the previous two books in this trilogy -- there really isn't a lot of linkage between the stories of Arthur Pendragon and Arthur de Caldicot. Okay, human beings can be mean, and glorious things can deteriorate due to human evils -- that's not much to go on. The tale of an innocent young man in the Crusades would have been interesting in itself, but Crossley-Holland never explores the depths of that story.

And what's more, this story is... rather boring. The Arthurian interludes are too few to really drag you in; instead it's the minutiae of living with Crusaders. Arthur de Caldicot is not a terribly interesting character, and the details of currying horses and political chitchat just bog the book down even further. Detailed writing could have brought this story to life, but Crossley-Holland's bare-bones writing is frustratingly sparse. Even potentially glorious scenes like the finding of the Grail, complete with a cameo by Jesus Christ, are rendered almost like a poorly-written screenplay.

Arthur is the only character of any real importance, and sadly he's not interesting enough to really grab your attention. Despite the time that has gone by since the first book of the trilogy, he sounds exactly the same -- naive, a little clueless, and virtually emotionless. It's hard to care if he goes home, finds his mother, or keeps the seeing stone.

"King of the Middle-March" is a vague, unsatisfying book that limps to its finale on a carpet of sparse prose and a dull lead character. It would take a pretty die-hard King Arthur fan to read this a second time.

Rating:
Summary: Weak finish for the trilogy
Review: The first two of this set were interesting and intriguing. "What will happen next" was constantly a thought. Any reader would wonder how the two Arthur's worlds would intersect, what would happen to our protagonist. This third book, by a respected and experienced children's author, is simply a time server, an incomplete story to fill a deadline. None of the story lines have any sort of climax; they just end. Lazy writing: quite frustrating to anyone who cares about books.