Kevin's Watch

Picked it up from 1 pound in a charity shop. Started it last night - a bit more aimed at kids than I'd expected and oddly quirky in spots, not a bad start but I'll reserve judgement until I've got a bit more of it under my belt.

Anyone else read it

Long time ago. That's the one that Disney's Sword In the Stone is based on.

My own introduction to Camelot was IIRC, Roger Lancelyn Green's version.

--A

The Once and Future King was my first literary introduction to the Arthurian cycle, I think. Unless it was Mary Stewart's novels... No, I think I read T.H. White when I was in junior high.

Well, I'm just about to start on my second night of it which will probably be the make or break of it.

My intro was via Camelot, the musical. Which is also based loosely on this book.

The book seems to mix time-frames with gay abandon - I'm at the bit where where Arthur is heading off to meet Robin Hood.

Uh...no comment...

--A

Avatar wrote:Uh...no comment...

--A

What he wants to ask, is, "which one: Kevin Costner, or Mel Brooks?"

My personal favourite is Locksley.

--A

I don't know........ I am struggling with it to be honest. I'm not saying it's bad, it's just not hitting the spot for me. I think me and TOAFK are going to part company.

I don't blame you. I swear I don't remember Robin Hood being in it...

--A

The meeting is engineered by Merlin when Arthur requests that his companion Kay be allowed to be transformed into another animal briefly - a feature of his training that hitherto Kay has been denied. Merlin says he cannot do this but instead arranges a quest for the young pupils in which they meet Robin Hood, rescue their castle workers from Morgan la Fey and Kay kills a Griffen.

That puts the pupils in Sherwood Forest. Is that the same location as Merlin - the rickety shack balanced precariously atop a pile of crumbling bricks, or the cottage in the woods?
As I recall the weather in the story was said to be very warm. Warm enough to grow oranges in the South of England.
I'd like to think Merlin was living in the Heart of the Land - at Cov!

He was certainly first encountered by Arthur in a cottage in a clearing in the woods some way from Arthur's home. If you want him in Cov Rune, be my guest (my own location's prior claim to house his residence not withstanding ).

I liked Bernard Cornwall's version, which has Arthur as a pre-Roman Welsh warlord.

--A

Does it portray Merlin as 'wizad' in the usual sense Av or more as druid mystic?

peter wrote:He was certainly first encountered by Arthur in a cottage in a clearing in the woods some way from Arthur's home. If you want him in Cov Rune, be my guest (my own location's prior claim to house his residence not withstanding ).

The Forest of Arden is as good a place as any.

However, that is certainly a good find, peter. The home from home of Merlin the Magician in his crumbling tower of stone, and the fall of Kevin's Watch in The Runes of the Earth. Like something out of a dream, when you think about it, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that SRD had used these comparisons weaving his own tale.

I guess what I liked best about the T.H. White version of the Arthurian legend is that I felt I was really getting inside the heads of Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot, and really feeling close to them as real people...no "legendary distance" between them and me. But it has its frustrating side, because the fall of Arthur's ideals is seen as inevitable due to a sin he didn't know he was committing (sleeping with his half-sister Morgause thinking she was Guinevere, which produces his antagonist son Mordred).

The above few posts have re-kindled my interest somewhat to the extent that l will probably pick up the book and continue at some point, most likely when I'm exhausted by, or have exhausted my stock of 'main books'.