I actually read this book first when I was 11 or 12 and would have rated it a 5 with that self. When I was a girl I was lucky enough to be a tomboy and have male figures in my life who taught me the things I would later realize were traditionally "guy stuff". I remembered this book with a mystical fondness because I remember absolutely identifying with the character of Merlin and cast myself in the role of boy adventurer.

Unfortunately, I have to now temper that literal reading with things I am a More...

my mother introduced me to these books. i'm a fool for arthurian legend, honestly. wrote a research paper on "celtic roots of arthurian legend" in high school-–honestly, one must ask how does an eleventh grader come up with such a topic? perhaps i had help. perhaps i must face the fact that i'm a total lit dweeb...

back to the topic, mary stewart's arthur legend retold. from merlin's perspective. he's the protagonist. he's the central figure of the saga as well as its narrator, and he, rather tha More...

One of the best Authurian saga I've ever read.
It felt as if I were there watching the events unfold before my eyes.

Crossposted from my blog

2 Stars


I’ve spoken about my love of all things Arthurian before, so I was really expecting to enjoy this book. All the ingredients are there – it’s centered on a character I normally like, on events that are often just skated over as prologue, and grounded in more unique ‘realistic’ Dark Age Britain than the typical ‘castles and knights’ setting. It was also pretty popular back in its day. Alas, I learn, yet again, that popularity often has little to do with quality. It’s More...

I love Mary Stewart's work. She always mixes the right amount of supernatural and realism, and here is no exception.

Throw out your previous ideas of Merlin, Arthur, and Magic. Here's something a little more Organic. In her Arthurian Saga, Stewart mixes historical figures with figures of myth in a way that is pleasing to the historian's eye. I don't mean in a true historically accurate sense, but in a way that allows you to fall into the world. Details of what was left behind from Roman Rule in More...

I read this for an 8th grade English oral book report. It was a great story, and the teacher was amazed that I was able to get explain the complicated plot to everyone so that they could understand it. I never went on to read the other 2 books in the series. I should reread this and then dig out the other two...

The first, and one of the very few, books that has ever reconciled me to Arthurian myth. After slogging through hideous Victorian sentimental priggishness everywhere else, this is a breath of fresh and magical air into a tired story.

For years I'd heard my mother talk of Mary Stewart. But it took me this long to finally pick one of her books up (I was admittedly bored and this was at hand) and read...and read...and read. I wish I'd read her stuff before. But, better late than never, they always say!

The book I happened to pick up was the first of her Merlin trilogy - The Crystal Cave.

Written from the perpective of the legendary Merlin, it traces his young life up to the point when he is instrumental in playing a part in Arthu More...

I love this book. The Arthurian legend from Merlin's perspective. He was always the most interesting character of the legend anyway. Stewart takes him from being "the son of no man" and gives him an interesting childhood. I couldn't help but feel for his vulnerability. The mystery surrounding who Merlin was still intrigues.

This first book of Stewart's acclaimed Arthurian Saga examines the childhood and maturation of Merlin. From his birth, Myriddin Emrys is set apart from other children, and not merely because he was born a bastard to a Welsh princess. He is strange and precocious, using his intellect even when his burgeoning magical powers didn't serve him. After his grandfather the king is killed, Merlin flees from the household. God leads him on a strange path northward into foreign lands, but Merlin doesn't fe More...

This is the story of a boy who realized he was different. Merlin lives with his mother, a woman scorned by her a father, a king, for producing a bastard and not naming the boy's father. Merlin soon realizes that he has a destiny and that he has to throw himself to fate to reach his destination. And so starts a story about a boy coming of age under special circumstances including magics, kidnapping, jealousy, revelations, and ending with a careful plan to produce an infant who would change the wo More...

Originally published on my blog here in October 2001.

Mary Stewart's Arthurian novels, particularly the first three, are her biggest selling. This is the first, a first person narrative of the childhood and early adult life of Merlin. It makes him the illegitimate child of Ambrosius, conceived when he was a fugitive long before he became High King of Britain, and a Welsh princess from Carmarthen, the town supposedly named after Merlin. (The main political events of the novel, from the reigns of V More...

Mary Stewart’s Crystal Cave, a popular retelling of the Arthurian Legend, is an interesting and yet underwhelming addition to the King Arthur subgenre.

From his crystal prison, Merlin recounts his early life, focusing on his difficult childhood as a son of no man and his service to Ambrosius. These tales, however, serve to lead to the main event—the conception of Arthur—and Merlin’s acceptance of his destiny. Stewart’s Merlin is not a wizard but rather a young man gifted with the Sight. He someti More...

I really enjoyed this book and recommend it for those who have read the stories of King Author and have only got a glimps of what Merlin the Wizard's roll was in Author's life and what was Merlin's life was like when he was a young child and how he grew up - the history behind the wizard you could say.
This first book starts out when Merlin is just a 6 year old boy known as Merlin the bastered. This book tells the tell of how Merlin grew up, what his mother was all about and how she ended up in More...

Il faut passer les premières pages où le récit à la première personne concentre tout ce que le récit à la première personne peut avoir de facile pour l'auteur et donc d'agaçant pour le lecteur.
Une fois l'histoire vraiment commencée la lecture se passe très bien, la prose se complexifie (le vocabulaire aussi...) et il n'y a plus qu'à se faire porter.

Quant à l'histoire elle-même, il est toujours plaisant de s'entendre raconter une légende, en particulier lorsque l'on croit la connaître sans la con More...

This book is fantastic. Mary Stewart obviously took the time to go through with a lot of researching of legends and so forth to form this saga. I never imagined there would be a book about King Arthur where I could be dying to know more. This saga is the reason I fell more in love with the stories of Camelot. Stewart brings forth a cast of familiar characters, and the adventure is very exciting. The story is told from Merlin's point of view, though in one of the stories the POV changes over. You More...

I wish I could give this 3.5 stars. This was an interesting take on the early life of Merlin and the origins of Arthur. I appreciate Stewart's lovely descriptions of the scenery and the realism she gave to such a magical and mythical story. Elements of this book that I considered to be flaws might have had to do with the time in which it was written, and the way popular storytelling has changed somewhat. For me, the biggest flaw was the lack of a structured plot moving all the way through the bo More...

A retelling of the Arthur legend based on Geoffrey on Monmouth's HISTORY OF THE KINGS OF BRITAIN.
From "Author's Note":
"Geoffrey's name is, to serious historians, mud. From his Oxford study in the twelfth century he produced a long, racy hotch-potch of 'history' from the Trojan War (where Brutus 'the King of the Britons' fought) to the seventh century AD, arranging his facts to suit his story, and when he got short of facts (which was on every page), inventing them out of whole cloth. Historicall More...

It's clear, in The Crystal Cave that Mary Stewart owes quite a bit to the genre of fantasy--and I mean this here in both senses. Not only is her primary source material Geoffery of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain (and an excerpt, concerning the legend of Merlin, is included), but the language here is incredibly rich in terms of sensory details.

In debates about genre, and the worth of "genre" works, romance--and I mean here the type often assumed to be read and written solely by housew More...

A wonderful mix of myth, history, romance, fiction, adventure, magic, and New York Times Best Seller, Mary Stewart’s tale of Merlin and his early years to Arthur’s conception has crept its way to the top of my list. Her writing sucks you in like a black hole and sends you to another time and world altogether. No more sitting in that comfortable chair by the fire, it’s onto the hills, castles, and battlefields of ancient Wales and Ireland! Each page seems to come alive as her words form the perfe More...

Mary Stewart's first published novel - NINE COACHES WAITING - was my first introduction to gothic-type romance, and it was a very auspicious introduction indeed - in my opinion, she was the best writer of the genre, aside from the great Daphne Du Maurier. When Stewart's Arthurian trilogy (Crystal Cave is the first of the series) came out, I resisted reading it - I wanted the old Mary Stewart. Silly me.

THE CRYSTAL CAVE is a wonderfully imagined, beautifully written novel about the young Merlin, More...

This is by far my favorite set of Arthurian novels. It even beats The Once and Future King. Told from the point of view of the child Merlin, it gives us his background long before we ever meet Arthur.
Stewart is a fine writer who draws one in from the first page and doesn't let go. One of the biggest reasons I prefer this story to many others is because she sets Merlin and Arthur in their proper century, the 5th. While drawing on the standard Arthurian legends brought to us by Sir Thomas Malory More...

I was first introduced to the tales of King Arthur, whose realm is made magical by the intriguing wizard Merlin at six or seven. And in my teens I was very much impressed by the 1981 John Boorman movie Excalibur starring Helen Mirren, Nigel Terry and Nicol Williamson, starring a rather sinister and hard to like Merlin. Later I saw the more sympathetic Merlin in the highly engaging 1998 TV series Merlin starring Sam Neil. Have read Queen of Camelot by Nancy McKenzie which I loved and its sequels. More...

One fascinating aspect of The Crystal Cave is that it is Merlin's story, told in his own voice. Stewart's prose is poetic and has a prettiness that may allow the casual reader to gloss the deeper currents in the book, but for me, the real subject of this book is Merlin's spiritual education. As a boy, Merlin is subject to sudden supernatural flashes of foresight; as he matures, he learns how to prepare for these insights, and how to trust his instincts about the future and act upon them in faith More...

This story if the first of four books dealing with the legends of Merlin, King Arthur and Camelot.

Ambrosius and Uther are the sons of a British king who has been defeated and they have fled across the channel to an area called Less Britain (Brittany?) to regroup and gain strength. Years ago Ambrosius had a secret liaison with the daughter of the King of Wales, Niniane. But he left her when he fled, not knowing she was pregnant. The son that was born to Niniane was named Myriddn Emrys , but he wa More...

The song “This is War”, by 30 Seconds to Mars, is a short summary of what generally is in a war. The song depicts the typical characteristics of a war and common roles people take, most particularly in an epic, genocidal, and/or holy war. Examples of these “roles” are those who are honest, those who lie, pariahs, civilians, soldiers, victims, prophets, those who are good, those who are evil, refugees, martyrs, defenders, attackers, and messiahs. In The Crystal Cave, written by Mary Stewart, the More...

First and foremost, I loved Mary Stewart's writing style - simple, clean, elegant, and rich with subtle detail. However, I was not as fond of the plot or, sadly, the characters. The entire novel is Merlin's story, and I simply didn't find him engaging enough to become fully immersed in the settling and the world. I saw him as defined entirely by his intelligence and his magic; the only time I found him actually that interesting was his romantic mishaps, and those were short-lived episodes. Also, More...

This was an interesting take on Merlin's life, and to be quite honest, I'm not completely sure how I feel about it.

The style of writing was good overall, but often the storyline was boring and dragged on a bit. The whole magic aspect confused me. I wasn't really sure if Merlin could really do anything extraordinary other than tell the future, but he would say things like: "Leave it to my magic," even though the book never really explained what he did that was magical or how he helped in any situ More...