Goodreads Mobile | see what your friends are reading

Jun 17, 2010

Michelle rated it:

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...

0 comments like

Jun 11, 2010

Kate rated it:

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 n More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 05, 2010

Books and Literature for Teens rated it:

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...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 21, 2010

McKenzie rated it:

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 More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 27, 2010

Samantha rated it:

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 po More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 04, 2011

Randy rated it:

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 More...

0 comments like

Apr 02, 2010

Donna rated it:

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 g More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 27, 2011

Sonia rated it:

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 kingdo More...

0 comments like

Feb 13, 2011

Robin rated it:

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 heartle More...

0 comments like

Aug 27, 2011

Dava rated it:

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 f More...

0 comments like

Jun 13, 2010

Kelly rated it:

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 occasionall More...

0 comments like

Jun 13, 2010

Jennifer rated it:

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. More...

0 comments like

Apr 20, 2010

Cindy rated it:

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’ More...

0 comments like

Mar 10, 2010

Steph Su rated it:

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 bombar More...

6 comments like (3 people liked it)

Apr 01, 2010

Briana rated it:

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' More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 28, 2010

Nancy rated it:

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) aim More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

May 29, 2010

Dialma rated it:

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...

0 comments like

Mar 27, 2010

Amy rated it:

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...

0 comments like

Feb 01, 2011

Cathy rated it:

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?

0 comments like

Dec 13, 2010

Alicia rated it:

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.

0 comments like

Jul 31, 2011

S-- rated it:

Full thoughts/review here..

Why I Started: Of the three books in the trilogy, this is the one that appealed most from reading the blurbs of them.

Why I (Didn't) Finish: It just… wasn't very good.

Rereadability: Get it away! Get it away! I've heard that the others (or, well, the retelling of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight anyway) are much better, but I'm not going to pick any of them up unless I have friends who can convince me I should.

Recommendation: Avoid More...

0 comments like

Oct 04, 2010

Angelika added it

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.

0 comments like

Nov 11, 2010

Margaret rated it:

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.

0 comments like

Jul 08, 2011

Brenda rated it:

Didn't care for the writing style of this one, and I've got too many other books to read, so I gave up on it about 50 or so pages in.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 02, 2011

Kylaia (Formerly known as Klymene) rated it:

i LOVED the end. So. Beautiful. The best ending ever. But it was quite predictable the fact that <spoiler>Mordred=Bran<spoiler>

0 comments like

Jun 12, 2011

Amber rated it:

Nivienne is Fey and living during the same time as King Arthur. She lives in the woods with the “Lady” and mage Merlin frequently visits. Because of an incident that happens with another Fey, Nivienne throws her heart away and lives the way that humans think Fey live. Once her brother leaves the Fey to join with King Arthur, she is urged by Merlin to help save Arthur’s peace in order to protect Fey lands.

Read the full review here. More...

0 comments like

Dec 21, 2010

Effie rated it:

A retelling of the King Arthur stories. It could have been a lot more interesting than it was.

0 comments like

May 25, 2010

Jaime (Two Chicks on Books) rated it:

The cover art is amazing but the story was hard to get into. The chapter lengths were way to long.

0 comments like

Jul 06, 2011

Jekloneo rated it:

The writing style kind of depressed me... but then, I was reading it during blocks, so...

0 comments like

Nov 09, 2010

Lisa rated it:

A lovely retelling of the Arthurian tales through the point of view of the Fae.

0 comments like