The Hollow Hills - Mary Stewart

Published by Book Club Associates/Hodder and Stoughton: Suffolk, England, 1974 (1973).

This one took me a while to get through. I've been reading it in the background while other books have been on the go for a couple of months at least, far longer than I'd usually take to get through a fiction book. Part of this is that the Alphabet Soup challenge took some of my focus, but part of it is also that the book is quite slow. Not boring. Just slow.

Able to be read as a stand-alone book (as indeed I have done so), The Hollow Hills is actually the second book in a series following the life of Merlin. This book follows Merlin from the morning after he has helped Uther to 'have his way' with Ygraine (the event that leads to the birth of Arthur) and ends with Arthur being proclaimed king at age 14. In between, Merlin has a number of adventures, including a time of overseas pilgrimage, finding the sword of Macsen Wledig (which Arthur will name 'Caliburn') and avoiding assailants in the wilds. Some of these adventures are interesting in their own right, but I also at times felt that some were a little bit irrelevant to the over-all plot - merely a way of stretching out Merlin's story. This might be unfair, as Stewart has obviously chosen deliberately to retell the story in a fresh way, but it is still something I felt at times.

One thing I did like about this version was how little of the mystical arts Merlin ever has to use in order to seem magical. The initial event where Uther is helped into the castle in disguise is told, from Merlin's perspective, as being nothing more than a disguise. Yet as the book progresses this story continues to grow until, much later in the book, Arthur tells Merlin that "men believed that Merlin had spirited the King's party, horses and all, invisibly within the walls of the stronghold, and out again in the broad light of next morning. 'And they say,' finished Arthur, 'that a dragon curled on the turrets all night, and in the morning Merlin flew off on him, in a trail of fire.'" (page 283). It is not that Merlin has no magic - he does occasionally employ it when needed - but much of what he does is through allowing stories to grow and taking advantage of prior knowledge to appear mystical.

This is interesting for being a different take on the Merlin and Arthur story, but is also not a story I will rush back to.

Completed 11 June 2022.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Various Picture Books

Image
As I said in my review of Peter Rabbit's Storytime Collection , I am wanting to find a way to acknowledge the books I read to Ezekiel without adding individual picture books to my reading list - I feel that would dilute it a bit much. So in this post, I've decided to look at a group of picture books all together. I've picked five picture books that I like (with a notable and noteworthy exception), and also asked Elise for five picture books she is  enjoying reading to Ezekiel. It's interesting (and helpful for this list) that our lists haven't overlapped at all this time around. So, here are ten picture books (plus one bonus 'book') that Ezekiel has been exposed to in the first 7ish months of his life: Karl's List Bunnies on the Bus - Philip Ardagh and (illustrator) Ben Mantle. Published by Walker Books Ltd: London, 2020 (2019). This is one of my favourites among our current picture books. A group of bunnies hijack a bus and hurtle through the town on th
Read more

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

Image
Published by Allen & Unwin: Crows Nest, NSW, Australia, 2008. Book snobs, block your ears. *whispers* I think the movie was better. Okay, book snobs, you can unblock your ears now. *waves to get the attention of book snobs* To be honest, a huge reason why I read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society at this moment in time was that I thought it would be funny to have two books with ridiculously long titles appear back-to-back in my list. For anyone who thought that there were super-deep reasons why I picked the books that I did, I hope this helps you see the error of your ways. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (which I am refusing to shorten for the rest of this review) still tells the same story as that in the movie adaptation (also called  The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society ), but does so in a less gripping (though still interesting) manner. This is for a few reasons: firstly,  The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society book is e
Read more

Words of Radiance - Brandon Sanderson

Image
Published by Tom Doherty Associates Books/TOR Fantasy: New York, 2014. Book 2 in 'The Stormlight Archives' series. Preceded by ' The Way of Kings .' Followed by (spin-off) ' Edgedancer ' and (main series) ' Oathbringer. ' Well, I finally read the second Stormlight book, this one even longer than the last  at a whopping 1080 pages, and once again found myself enjoying Sanderson's world immensely. The plot does take longer than strictly necessary in places - particularly in the storyline following Shallan Davar as she journeys towards the Shattered Plains - but overall is still a page-turner. By the middle of Words of Radiance our three main characters (Kaladin, Shallan and Adolin) are finally in the same location, something that was never achieved in the first book. In keeping them apart for so long, Sanderson is able to give his readers a real understanding of what makes each character tick, and this becomes quite interesting as when these character
Read more