The Lost Years of Merlin
The blurb on the front of the book, taken from the New York Times
review, claims that this is a book rich in magic. I can't entirely
disagree with that. These are the books that, years ago, finally got my
brother reading.
I grew up surrounded by books. My mom read constantly when I was a child, and so did I. When I was two I got her to teach me the alphabet. When I was four I taught myself to read by memorizing Green Eggs and Ham and matching the words in my head to those on the page. I surprised everyone at my fifth birthday by reading all of my cards by myself. And I never looked back, inhaling book after book. But it took my brother longer to get on that path.
Confused by his disinterest in books (it was probably just that he was more interested in video games) my parents bought series after series in an attempt to get him reading. Narnia never interested him, and neither did Redwall. While many kids' love of reading was ignited by Harry Potter, my brother never finished the first book. And so it went for years, until my brother came across this series. Suddenly he was rushing through books, eager to get the next one and find out where the story went.
So there is magic in these books. There must be.
Unfortunately they didn't speak to me on quite the same level. The books are a bit choppy. The plot has a tendency to lurch forward, then hang out for a while. Especially in the first third of the book. The symbolism was obvious and a bit hammered in. And the ending was fully predictable. A lot of that is just due to this being a kid's book, but it didn't feel particularly new or exciting to me, as entertaining as a lot of it was.
The second third of the book bears a remarkable resemblance to the beginning of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. From the tree house to the prophecy about the boy with the glowing green stone who can save everyone to fleeing from a gigantic spider, there was a lot of deja vu in these pages. The beats of his quest even felt a lot like a video game.
By the end of the book I was a little more used to the style and the climax was certainly engaging, even though I knew exactly how it was going to happen. (You mean the evil king is actually his father? You don't say.) I have the next book and I will be reading it, if only because it will probably make a good palate cleanser between longer, denser novels.
I grew up surrounded by books. My mom read constantly when I was a child, and so did I. When I was two I got her to teach me the alphabet. When I was four I taught myself to read by memorizing Green Eggs and Ham and matching the words in my head to those on the page. I surprised everyone at my fifth birthday by reading all of my cards by myself. And I never looked back, inhaling book after book. But it took my brother longer to get on that path.
Confused by his disinterest in books (it was probably just that he was more interested in video games) my parents bought series after series in an attempt to get him reading. Narnia never interested him, and neither did Redwall. While many kids' love of reading was ignited by Harry Potter, my brother never finished the first book. And so it went for years, until my brother came across this series. Suddenly he was rushing through books, eager to get the next one and find out where the story went.
So there is magic in these books. There must be.
Unfortunately they didn't speak to me on quite the same level. The books are a bit choppy. The plot has a tendency to lurch forward, then hang out for a while. Especially in the first third of the book. The symbolism was obvious and a bit hammered in. And the ending was fully predictable. A lot of that is just due to this being a kid's book, but it didn't feel particularly new or exciting to me, as entertaining as a lot of it was.
The second third of the book bears a remarkable resemblance to the beginning of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. From the tree house to the prophecy about the boy with the glowing green stone who can save everyone to fleeing from a gigantic spider, there was a lot of deja vu in these pages. The beats of his quest even felt a lot like a video game.
By the end of the book I was a little more used to the style and the climax was certainly engaging, even though I knew exactly how it was going to happen. (You mean the evil king is actually his father? You don't say.) I have the next book and I will be reading it, if only because it will probably make a good palate cleanser between longer, denser novels.
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