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A review by opheliapo
The Once and Future King by T.H. White
5.0
I didn’t want his to end; I haven’t been so emotionally invested in a book since I was a child.
The Once and Future king is so packed full of empathy and truth, starting so innocently with Warts’ adventures in the Forest Sauvage, flipping itself entirely to understand the effects of a difficult childhood in The Queen of Air and Darkness, maintaining a transient, melancholy hope in The Ill-Made Knight, and then leaving with this kind of apologetic admittance that all the answers are not available and goodness does not always conquer in The Candle in the Wind.
Not just this, but the characters act as sort of hyper-real caricatures of truth, transcending the time period and standing for the triumphs and failings of all humanity. Pellinore and the Questing Beast with their love and true innocence, Arthur with tiresome oath to his duty, Lancelot full of shame and nobility, Agravain with toxic jealousy of his mother’s affections, Merlin with his duty to future history, and Guinevere with her ferocity in the face of her own love.
I just know this is a book I’m going to read again and again for the rest of my life, something i’ll read to my children, something I’ll read to anyone who’ll listen.
The Once and Future king is so packed full of empathy and truth, starting so innocently with Warts’ adventures in the Forest Sauvage, flipping itself entirely to understand the effects of a difficult childhood in The Queen of Air and Darkness, maintaining a transient, melancholy hope in The Ill-Made Knight, and then leaving with this kind of apologetic admittance that all the answers are not available and goodness does not always conquer in The Candle in the Wind.
Not just this, but the characters act as sort of hyper-real caricatures of truth, transcending the time period and standing for the triumphs and failings of all humanity. Pellinore and the Questing Beast with their love and true innocence, Arthur with tiresome oath to his duty, Lancelot full of shame and nobility, Agravain with toxic jealousy of his mother’s affections, Merlin with his duty to future history, and Guinevere with her ferocity in the face of her own love.
I just know this is a book I’m going to read again and again for the rest of my life, something i’ll read to my children, something I’ll read to anyone who’ll listen.