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lizziemcherring's review against another edition
4.0
read for school in one sitting. Interesting, madness and knowledge v sanity and ignorance
ultimatecryptid's review
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
It takes a lot of work to make someone doing a play-by-play sound interesting, and this book does not deliver. However, the events themselves are interesting! You win some you lose some.
the_games_a_foot's review against another edition
Geoffrey of Monmouth has a severe dislike of Merlin. He has passages that make Merlin seem a great man, stable, and a wise leader and in the next sentence and for paragraphs he is then a raving lunatic with little to no explanation or growth.
Maybe it is the writing style.
Maybe it is the fact that Monmouth is a Christian and I am a Pagan.
Maybe it is the fact that Monmouth and I are separated by hundreds (thousands) of years of Merlinian and Arthurian scholarship.
Maybe it is the writing style.
Maybe it is the fact that Monmouth is a Christian and I am a Pagan.
Maybe it is the fact that Monmouth and I are separated by hundreds (thousands) of years of Merlinian and Arthurian scholarship.
lukerik's review against another edition
challenging
informative
medium-paced
4.0
I noticed that Geoffrey used some techniques in his History of the Kings of Britain that would later be used in post-modernist fiction. In this book he plays with structure and uses structure to tell the story in a way that I just don’t think I’ve seen before in something so old. It reminded me a bit of Heinrich Böll’s Gruppenbild mit Dame where the novel still has its scaffolding up and you’re not sure if its under construction or being taken apart.
Geoffrey has made his poem by jointing together a whole range of disparate sources. The joints are unwieldy and rough. The themes of the poem come in related pairs, so you have for example the past and the future or madness and prophecy. As past and future are jointed in the present so madness and prophecy might be jointed in people. Cleverly done, but the poem is something of a victim of its own success as it is rather a disjointed read.
I see there is more than one edition on the market. I have Basil Clarke’s. I recommend it. It has the Latin text in parallel if that’s useful to you. A very good introduction that will tell you everything you’ll ever want to know about the background to the poem. Also excellent notes which (amongst much else) identify the sources Geoffrey has cobbled together. Without that context I don’t think I would have understood what he was trying to do. It also has translations of the Lailoken A & B tales from Cotton Titus A xix (early Merlin analogue tales) and part of Yr Afallennau from the Black Book of Carmarthen.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Mental illness
oblomov's review against another edition
2.0
This little tale was short and acrid.
I'm not quite sure what I expected from Geoffrey, as this story merely repeats the problems of [b: The History of the Kings of Britain|129521|The History of the Kings of Britain|Geoffrey of Monmouth|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1456245951l/129521._SY75_.jpg|124745], but somehow manages to be more weird.
Long after Arthur's gone, Merlin gets PTSD and runs away to live in the woods. Both his wife and his sister try to stop him. That's pretty much it. It's hardly a life of Merlin, since it mentions nothing of his miraculous childhood and only barely touches on his time with Arthur.
What the story does show, in abundance, is that Merlin is kind of an arsehole:
He tries to rat out his adoring sister for no real reason, laughs that a man bothered to mend his shoes because he's fated to die soon, and Merlin kills a bloke by ripping off a stag's antlers (with his bare hands) and throwing them at the victim.
Admittedly that last one is metal, but Merlin is a pig to family, beast and the soon to be departed, and knowing he's meant to be very mentally unwell isn't played off as an excuse, as Geoffrey seems to think trauma is all for laughs. There's even a scene when another raving, literally frothing, man is captured and tied up to 'amuse his captors with his insane ramblings', and Merlin only takes pity on the poor fella because he recognises him as an old friend.
The actual life and awful deeds of Merlin are about thirty percent of this book, the rest is taken up by cryptic prophecies, Geoffrey bitching about Britain, copy pastes from The History and entirely inaccurate scientific musings on the behaviours of birds, fish and the weather. Also apparently there's no bees in Ireland, who knew? Oh yes, and someone takes up about two pages to simply list every magical river/spring in the world, which can cure everything from wounds to sterility, and cause everything from making you boring to turning you off wine.
Geoffrey does give us more flesh for the Arthurian mythos that wasn't in The History (or not that I can remember, at least), including the woman who'd later become Morgan la Fay and what happened to Arthur after the battle of Camlann, which is nice.
This was mercifully quicker than The History but not very enjoyable past the more surreal bits. History lovers may be interested in the 'science' nonsense as an example of medieval ecology theory, Arthur fans may like the references, and I'm just pissed Geoffrey ends this tosh by asking Britain to 'throw him a wreath' and congratulate him for this stupid story.
I'm not quite sure what I expected from Geoffrey, as this story merely repeats the problems of [b: The History of the Kings of Britain|129521|The History of the Kings of Britain|Geoffrey of Monmouth|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1456245951l/129521._SY75_.jpg|124745], but somehow manages to be more weird.
Long after Arthur's gone, Merlin gets PTSD and runs away to live in the woods. Both his wife and his sister try to stop him. That's pretty much it. It's hardly a life of Merlin, since it mentions nothing of his miraculous childhood and only barely touches on his time with Arthur.
What the story does show, in abundance, is that Merlin is kind of an arsehole:
He tries to rat out his adoring sister for no real reason, laughs that a man bothered to mend his shoes because he's fated to die soon, and Merlin kills a bloke by ripping off a stag's antlers (with his bare hands) and throwing them at the victim.
Admittedly that last one is metal, but Merlin is a pig to family, beast and the soon to be departed, and knowing he's meant to be very mentally unwell isn't played off as an excuse, as Geoffrey seems to think trauma is all for laughs. There's even a scene when another raving, literally frothing, man is captured and tied up to 'amuse his captors with his insane ramblings', and Merlin only takes pity on the poor fella because he recognises him as an old friend.
The actual life and awful deeds of Merlin are about thirty percent of this book, the rest is taken up by cryptic prophecies, Geoffrey bitching about Britain, copy pastes from The History and entirely inaccurate scientific musings on the behaviours of birds, fish and the weather. Also apparently there's no bees in Ireland, who knew? Oh yes, and someone takes up about two pages to simply list every magical river/spring in the world, which can cure everything from wounds to sterility, and cause everything from making you boring to turning you off wine.
Geoffrey does give us more flesh for the Arthurian mythos that wasn't in The History (or not that I can remember, at least), including the woman who'd later become Morgan la Fay and what happened to Arthur after the battle of Camlann, which is nice.
This was mercifully quicker than The History but not very enjoyable past the more surreal bits. History lovers may be interested in the 'science' nonsense as an example of medieval ecology theory, Arthur fans may like the references, and I'm just pissed Geoffrey ends this tosh by asking Britain to 'throw him a wreath' and congratulate him for this stupid story.
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