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A review by jason_pym
The Book of Merlyn by T.H. White
3.0
A dark and bizarre end to The Once and Future King series. However, this edition has great illustrations by Trevor Stubley which redeemed it for me.
Very heavily influenced by World War 2，there's a lot about war, and Communism (Arthur gets turned into an ant to experience totalitarianism) but nothing on Fascism oddly. Here's the kind of mood the book keeps lurching into:
"The treachery to which he had been subjected by his human race had only just begun to weigh upon him. He had never put it in plain terms to himself: But the truth was he had been betrayed by everybody, even by his own wife and his oldest friend. His son was the least of the traitors... For what hope had he among mankind? The had murdered, almost invariably, every decent person who had spoken to them since Socrates. The had even murdered their God. Anybody who told them the truth was the legitimate object of their treachery, and Merlin's sentence on himself was one of death."
Unlike The Sword in the Stone, I don't think this is going to be snapped up by Disney any time soon.
Very heavily influenced by World War 2，there's a lot about war, and Communism (Arthur gets turned into an ant to experience totalitarianism) but nothing on Fascism oddly. Here's the kind of mood the book keeps lurching into:
"The treachery to which he had been subjected by his human race had only just begun to weigh upon him. He had never put it in plain terms to himself: But the truth was he had been betrayed by everybody, even by his own wife and his oldest friend. His son was the least of the traitors... For what hope had he among mankind? The had murdered, almost invariably, every decent person who had spoken to them since Socrates. The had even murdered their God. Anybody who told them the truth was the legitimate object of their treachery, and Merlin's sentence on himself was one of death."
Unlike The Sword in the Stone, I don't think this is going to be snapped up by Disney any time soon.