Book Review
The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart
Okay - this was the first book Glenn gave me to read. It took me a while to get into reading it. Once I did, though, I burned through it pretty quickly. My impression was there was a lot of descriptive passages that bogged it down for me. I wanted action and adventure, not tactics and historical context. Wait a minute… I know what you’re thinking… “how can an Arthurian saga be told without including all the history of the period?!?” You would be correct, but at times sentences seemed as long as the chapters… so I found myself skipping a paragraph here and there to get back to the characters in the story.
I really enjoyed how Mary Stewart portrayed Merlin not as a wizard, but as a very intelligent person who knew how to read people. Absolutely there was mysticism and visions, but there was also fabulous feats of people engineering that makes more sense of Merlin’s enduring legend that just magic alone.
Book Score: B
Would I recommend?: Yes, depending on the person and their interest in Arthurian legend
