This 1939 book is for highly motivated, very bright fantasy fans who have read everything else in your library and really, really want some heavy-duty Arthurian legend. The vocabulary in this lead me to read it with a dictionary by my side, and the concepts of friendship, world peace, and doing good in the world are handled very philosophically.
That said, I enjoyed this. It has moments of humor, was beautifully written, and laid out the main story of Arthur and the knights of the Round Table in a fairly easy-to-follow fashion. The one thing that I enjoyed, but which gives me pause when recommending it to students, was the Arthur-Guinevere-Lancelot love triangle. The levels of stupidity on all sides was fascinating, and since the circumstances often devolved into chaos and violence, I think that it would keep the interest of those reading this for the action and adventure, but I doubt that students would have quite the interest in the soap opera quality of this sub plot that I did.
I'm glad I got a copy. It's something that will challenge readers that I can hand to them more happily than, say, The Three Musketeers or Vanity Fair (which I finally deaccessioned because if I couldn't finish it after 20 years of trying, what are the odds that one of my students could?).
Monday, July 27, 2009
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Oh, gee... I was going to beg you to hand Once and Future King and/or Three Musketeers to eldest son this coming year. Then I realized he's not at your school any longer. *Sigh.*
ReplyDeleteYounger son has read four Percy Jackson books in about as many days. This is a good pace for him: he's really not much of a reader (though please do hand him back that Odyssey book he had -- he really does want to finish it, I think).