halberdbooks 's review for:

The Sword in the Stone by T.H. White

3.75

adventurous funny fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

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Equal parts poetry and parody, homage and worship, archaic and ultracontemporary, I simply was not prepared by the comfortable strangeness of this text. I was also not prepared for the casual racism of the 12th-17th Century to be replaced by the casual racism of the early 20th Century, but that should not actually have surprised me. A very strong beginning, an exceptional ending, and a crushingly dull middle has me both excited and nervous for the whole four-novel sequence.