Merlin's Harp

Merlin's Harp (Arthurian novel)

2.93 of 5 stars 2.93  ·  rating details  ·  292 ratings  ·  56 reviews
When I was yet a very young woman I threw my heart away. Ever since then I have lived heartless, or almost heartless, the way Humans think all Fey live.

Among the towering trees of magical Avalon, where humans dare not tread, lives Niviene, daughter of the Lady of the Lake. Her people, the Fey, are folk of the wood and avoid the violence and greed of man. But the strife of...more
Paperback, 256 pages
Published March 1st 2010 by Sourcebooks Fire (first published December 1st 1995)
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Michelle
Touted as a new and different interpretation of Arthurian legend I thought perhaps this book would be a good bridge into fantasy for a reader somewhat interested in exploring the genre. Unfortunately it fell short in that regard. It was such a tough read that it did more to turn me off the genre than on.

The flowery and excessive prose made it, at times, difficult to follow. I never really got a clear picture of what either land looked like. Apple Valley (ie: Avalon) was slightly more vivid than...more
Kate

From the opening paragraph of Merlin's Harp, I was lost. Crompton's writing is beautiful to the point that it may be too overcomplicated for many readers, teens or otherwise. To be honest, I had to pull out a dictionary after only the second sentence to figure out what in the world a "coracle" is. (It is a small boat, by the way.) As the novel continued, Crompton's writing style did grow on me a little bit. However, I am sure that while it suits the plot well (seeing that this a novel about the...more
Books and Literature for Teens
Told from a female perspective, the legend of King Arthur, Merlin, and the infamous Morgan le Faye has never looked more magical. Brimming with fairy [Fey:] lore and myths of how Arthur’s misty history unfolds, Merlin’s Harp will satisfy any Arthurian fan or reader--teen or adult--alike.
What I liked most about Merlin’s Harp was the very detailed descriptions of the mythical Fey folk. The author wrote as if a real Fey girl witnessed the story of Avalon [Apple Island:]. Nivienne (pronounced simila...more
McKenzie
Nivienne is Fey, living just outside the Human realm. She lives a fairly normal life with her mother and brother. She has the added power of reading auras. All is well until a young woman stumbles into their forest. She is King Arthur's wife, the one of legends. Nivienne's brother sets off to the Human kingdom to return her to where she belongs. The whole family community, though, soon becomes involved in this Arthurian legend.

Let me first start off by saying, Merlin's Harp fits into a very spec...more
Samantha
I tried really hard to like Merlin's Harp. I was lured into buying it by its exquisite cover but readers be warned: the cover is a lot better than the writing within. Merlin's Harp does have good figurative language -sometimes bordering more on poetry than prose- and a potentially interesting concept going for it, but ultimately the book falls flat.

The story is narrated by Nivienne, daughter of the Lady of the Lake. Nivienne is a Fey mage, apprentice to the wizard Merlin. She is a powerful pract...more
Twinkle John
Merlin's Harp is a fantasy/young adult fiction by Anne Eliot Crompton.The main character in this novel is a Fey named Niviene. This entire novel was written in first person narrative of Niviene. She is the daughter of Nimway (the Lady of the Lake). She lives in the woods of Avalon with her mother and brother Lugh. Niviene is special because she possesses the magic of seeing the future through the flames of a fire. A prodigy of Merlin, Niviene travels with him between Avalon and to the land of Ca...more
Randy
I bought this book because I am a huge fan of Arthurian literature. One of my students started this book and returned it without completing it as she was having difficulty following the storyline. I wanted to read it to see if the storyline was indeed difficult to follow.

I think that reading this book with no knowledge of the King Arthur legends would be confusing to some readers. The reason is that this book alludes to facets of the story, but it is really a story only related to the whole Arth...more
Donna
Well this was, um . . . not good. Really, at all. I don't think it's ever taken me so long to read a book so short. Like wading through snow up to my hips. It's so overwrought and drowning in such flowery language that it's hard to connect to anything that's going on in the story. I often found myself having read a page without really reading it and only skimming it when I went back over it.

To Crompton's credit, she stuck very closely to faerie lore which is to her benefit but even greater to he...more
Sonia
This was a very different book from my usual fare, but I did enjoy it. I'll admit it took me a while to get into the story and even longer for me to become attached to the characters enough to care what actually happened to them, but once I did, I really did enjoy the story and found myself engrossed and not wanting to put the book down.

This is the story of King Arthur, his Knight Lancelot and his Queen Gwenevere...as well as Merlin the magician and the world of the fae/fairy kingdom...quite a d...more
Robin
I should preface this by saying I don't read a lot of fantasy. But I like the Arthurian Legend and this was a Kindle freebie so I grabbed it.

I liked that the book pulled you into this strange other world of the Fey. It was weird but interesting the way it was written from a Fey point of view, as though their world was normal and the human world was the strange one. But I suppose that happens a lot in fantasy.

The thing I struggled with was the concept that Fey were heartless creatures. Though Niv...more
Dava Stewart
Have you ever read a book that makes you feel like you just don't know enough to really appreciate it? That's how I felt reading this one. It merges the legend of Arthur/Lancelot/Guinevere and the Fey, and that's interesting. Some of the writing is absolutely gorgeous. But.

There are times when it feels like the onus is on the reader to know what happened. In one or two places, I went back to make sure I hadn't missed some pages, because big chunks of information were missing and it felt like I s...more
Mayra
Oh. My. Gosh. This book was AMAZING. I love legends, mythology, and folktales, but before reading this, I really knew nothing about the Arthurian legend. And when I began Merlin's Harp, I found it boring and strange, and thought maybe I wouldn't like it. But soon I understood it, and I read it over several times. I never get tired of it. I really love the detail and the poetic, spiritual sense, and I love Niviene's point of view. I found it interesting and beautiful when it described her being w...more
Althea Ann
Wow. I can't believe all the haters in the review section here.
After some contemplation, I'm guessing that it's because the book was repackaged for the newer edition with a wholly inappropriate cover. The original ROC edition has a pretty lovely, Pre-Raphaelite-inspired cover by Don Maitz. The new edition has this cheesy, pink-glittery cover that makes it look like a cheap romance for 13-year-old girls.

You can't judge a book by its cover, but you can surely make certain that the wrong people re...more
Michelle ☕Ndayeni☕
A different take on the Arthurian legend, this book tells the story from the viewpoint of Niviene, a fey mage whose mother is a friend to Merlin. Through Merlin, Niviene eventually becomes caught up in human affairs, particularly those of King Arthur. Familiar events play out through the course of the story, but with a different twist to them, the true identities of some of the players, or the relationships between them, having been changed. Through it all, the writing mangages to conjur up the...more
Kelly
Reading Merlin's Harp, I realized something about novels that portray the interaction between the human world and Faerie. They usually don't tell the stories of fae folk in their own homeland. There are exceptions, of course, but authors tend to focus on faeries stuck in the human world, or humans encountering Faerie. I think I may know why that is. When writing about faeries living in Faerie, it's all too easy to have nothing happen.

Anne Eliot Crompton uses beautiful, if occasionally stilted, l...more
Jennifer Wardrip
Reviewed by Jennifer Rummel for TeensReadToo.com

Nivienne never imagined she'd live in the human world. When Merlin comes to Avalon bringing word of a Saxon invasion and threat of peace to their land, she agrees to journey into the human world. After all, with her child gone missing and her heart torn away from her body, she has nothing left in either world.

Once at King Arthur's court, she recognizes the Queen as the woman who became lost and wondered into Avalon one day. Her brother, Lugh, led t...more
Cindy Hudson
Merlin’s Harp by Anne Eliot Crompton is a retelling of the legend of King Arthur and his times from the perspective of Niviene, daughter of the Lady of the Lake, known to Niviene as Nimway. They live on Apple Island, also known as Avalon, with Niviene’s brother, Lugh. Niviene is happy in her Fey world, living apart from most of her kind except when she and Lugh and their friend Elana slip into the villages and pretend to be Human.

The basic elements of the Arthur legend are here—Gwen’s relationsh...more
Steph Su
I don’t get offended by books often. Premarital sex, abstinence until marriage, drinking, backstabbing, pranking, people killing people, etc.—everything is good in my opinion as long as it’s written well and doesn’t sound like an agenda that is out of place within the fictional world. MERLIN’S HARP, however, is a mess of a novel, poorly organized and weakly characterized—unfortunate, because the writing is beautiful and the story held such promise.

For a generation that’s being bombarded with a m...more
Briana
Review
Niviene is fey and since Crompton stuck to the true nature and lore of fey, which I appreciated, she is mostly heartless and doesn't carry the same feelings and emotions as humans. This caused problems in not only her, but also some of the other fey characters, development. You see I believe it is our emotions and feelings as humans that allow for good character development in stories. However, I still liked the characters in Merlin's Harp fairly well, despite the fact that I couldn't rela...more
Nancy
As a librarian I tell my kids that if they don't like what they're reading in the first 100 pages to give it up. I had to invoke that rule with this book. Although Library Journal calls it a "lyrical retelling" of the Arthurian chronicles, the plot deviates so far from the myth as to be a completely different story. Some characters are familiar yet within the context of the story, flat and incongruous. The plot lacks a cohesive center and rambles (perhaps the lyrical retelling) aimlessly towards...more
Arlene
won't be everyone's cuppa tea... but. I enjoyed stepping into a old old world where innocents where just that. everything wasn't black or white nor was it all clearly seen.. The Fae weren't ever given human emotions which makes it hard at times to empathize. try it, you might like it. reminded me of Marion Zimmerman Bradley
Denise Kettering
This book was difficult for me to get through in part because the writing style did not really appeal to me. This book does provide a different take on the Arthurian legend. The story is interesting but as the book at times seems to be more about the language than the content, it became a bit trying for me to get through.
Dialma
This book was a quick read, but it didn't impressed me as much as I thought it would. It was an interesting take on the Arthurian tale, but I felt the characters could had been develop more and the writing could had been more inviting to the reader. I did enjoy the read, since I always had found Arthur, Merlin and their world fascinating. But I must say, never truly fell in love with any of the characters, not even the Fey. I think I just never felt truly connected to the story, and therefore my...more
Amy
I don't know whether to rate this 2 or 3 stars. Goodreads classifies 2 stars as something that was okay and 3 stars as something that I liked. MERLIN'S HARP falls distinctly into the middle, so I suppose 2.5 would be adequate, even though I think it a bit harsh based on several factors. I didn't hate it but I didn't love it either. The narrator Niviene was apathetic and held the reader at an arm's length so I wasn't able to associate too closely with her nor feel it within myself to care for her...more
Kimberly
It seemed to try a little too hard to be artistic. Through the first couple of chapters, the author skipped around through different time periods in the narrator's life so much that I began losing track of what was happening, much less when.

Still, it was an interesting perspective of the Arthurian legend.
Cathy
Very pretty, very slight take on Arthurian legend. Crompton writes beautifully -- I just didn't think that the book added up to much!

However, it certainly deserved much better than that hideous eBook cover, with the photoshopped swirlies and the clashing color scheme ... why didn't they use the beautiful paperback art instead?
Alicia
This book was an interesting read. The plot wasn't very clear and, until the end, it seemed to just tell the inner thoughts of a Fey female over a couple of decades. The author tied it all up at the end, though. I liked reading about human emotion and actions from the Fey point of view and the author was pretty clever about it.
Angelika
After reading all the reviews and comments about this book on Goodreads, I think I may have to re-read this book. I seem to recall liking it and waiting for a sequel that never came out. I certainly don't remember the book being as bad as everyone is saying it is.
Margaret
I always enjoy stories of King Arthur and Merlin. This one was a different perspective, from the view of the Fey on Avalon. I think I've read it before, but it was still an enjoyable read.
Lorie
Good twist but I hated how I could get what was going on at times because it jumps around so much and time seems to elapse very quickly.
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Same as the other? 1 6 Jan 24, 2010 03:00am  
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Merlins Tochter

ANNE ELIOT CROMPTON is an award-winning author of children's books. She has raised ponies and goats and painted wildlife. Born to Ethel Cook Eliot (a writer) and Samuel Eliot (a professor) she attended the Academy of the Sacred Heart (now Doane Stuart School) in Albany, New York. She worked briefly in Providence, Florida; then married Willard Crompton and moved to the small hill town of Chesterfie...more
More about Anne Eliot Crompton...
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“Water rising under rock
Breaks earth's lock,
Floods thirst roots,
Nurtures sap and trunk and shoots,
Greens and plumps each greedy leaf
Till dappled sunlight like a thief
Sucks leaf-water as I breathe,
Makes of mist an airy wreath
To drift and float and wander high
To the sky,
And fall again,
Sweet, rich rain,
Run under rock and
Rise again.”
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