Customer Reviews

Merlin's Bones

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have had this one on my bookshelf for a while, and I now regret pulling it down. As I was reading the last 100 pages of the 350 in the book, I wondered how Mr. Saberhagen was going to resolve so much with the remaining space. This created the fear that there would be the requirement for a sequel. Worse than that, though, was the reality that the author attempted to resolve certain things with a sentence or paragraph. The overall feeling I was left with was that Mr. Saberhagen produced an outline for an arc, got in the middle of it and decided it was something that he didn't want to do. Thus, we get the one book abridged version. The most interesting character, the Fisher King, who is huge in the first 100 pages is nowhere to be found in the last sections. Argh.

I agree with the reviewer who praised Saberhagen's ability to juggle plots and multiple storylines but criticized the author's ability to end his books satisfactorily. That's the case here. FS sets the stage and introduces the characters quite skillfully (though he has a medieval character referring to a 'sandwich') and stage-manages the action with aplomb.

But but but. FS really loves time-warps and time-bends, having characters disappear and reappear in other guises, and this story is lousy with them. To the point that he seems to be indulging himself with unhknotting these little puzzles he's created. As with his Dracula books, when Merlin's not around, you find yourself waiting for him to arrive.

The triple-climax in the last 50 pages kind of goes all over the place and the Northman who narrates part of the story in the book's latter half disappears completely--did he die? Wha' happened?

Sturdily constructed but not magical.

Saberhagen produces a brilliant, exciting version of the Arthurian legend, with technology, magic, and time-travel mixed together fantastically. The book feels unfinished, with the many rough edges making the incredible twists and turns of the plot even harder to follow. However, it is an incredibly creative version of the story, and some of the plot twists are very satisfying.

This book started out slow, but picked up in speed after the first 100 pages. By that point, it became a whirling confusion with different narrators and time lines. Saberhagen seems to enjoy these time paradoxes and overlaps employed in the book, but they lacked believability. All the jumps made it difficult to give time for proper character development. If given some more time and a few hundred additional pages, this book could work. As it is now, it was a bit contrived.

An Interesting concept, and welcome addition to the Arthurian Camelot Mythos. I've been a fan of Saberhagen's since I read Empire of the East in High School in the early 1980's. I usually find his style very enjoyable and well flowing, however, I found that Merlin's Bones took some getting used to the flow and style. It started out slow for me but somewhere just before halfway it picked up speed until it smashed into a brick wall at the end.

In medieval times, sometime after the Days of King Arthur and the Round Table, a group of traveling entertainers seek refuge in an abandoned and run down stronghold with a wall that protects several buildings including a house that has some apparent magical properties. This band of actors, jugglers, and jesters are running from a king they displeased by heckling him in their act. Little do they know that the one place they seek shelter from both the nights storm and the angry king is the final resting place of the mythical magician Merlin from King Arthur's Kingdom of Camelot. The little band of entertainers soon discover that they are indeed protecting the place where the great magician was entombed alive many years earlier, and must pose as the servants to the great oracle of Merlin's Bones.

Meanwhile in the late twentieth, early twenty-first century, a research scientist, who works for an organization that has devoted itself to the study of Reality and Time/Space is experiencing strange events in and around her lab and the surrounding facilities. Strange guests arrive who claim to be associated with the legendary King Arthur and the Knights of The Round Table. These "Guests" prove to be very demanding and forceful and mysterious as well as cunning. They want to use her scientific equipment to help in there search for Merlin's final resting place and more importantly the magical powers that his bones are said to possess.

What made this a slow starter for me was the initial exposition of the band of travelers, who are after all the most important characters of the book. That coupled with jumping to the modern times future, the "Interlude" as many of the chapters and subchapters were titled. Until I got fully involved with and excited about the story. It took major character development for this to happen, at least for me.

This book crosses the Science-Fiction/Fantasy fine line it isn't totally Fantasy, yet it can't be called Science Fiction on it's own. It's primarily a fantasy set as I said earlier sometime after the Days of King Arthur and Camelot. I would recommend this book first to Saberhagen fans, then to Fantasy enthusiasts, and possibly to that small portion of Sci-Fi fans that like Sci-Fi/Fantasy crossover stories.

Personally I enjoyed reading this book, once I got into it. It was one of those reads where I would start off by reading most if not all of one chapter. Then put it down for a few days then read only a few pages, then pick it up a week or two later read a little and put it back down, until about halfway. I then began to read it more often and as much as possible until I finished it.

On a scale of one to five, with one being forget it and five being read this book and tell everybody about it. I would rate this book a three and half.

If you like sci- fi and fantasy than this book is a good one. Unless you really grasp the plot in the story you could think of this book as a dud.

Book starts promising, with some likeable characters. But the lack of development in the characters, the frequent jumps in the timeline, and the frequent changes in first person narrative created a book that was hard to follow and like. And the author leaves many questions unanswered at the end.

I've always felt Saberhagen's weakness was in writing endings. He almost always does a great job of shifting points of view and keeping multiple plot lines suspended simultaneously, but his conclusions often feel abrupt to me (Empire of the East was a notable exception).

The first half of Merlin's Bones is perfectly entertaining, a well-constructed set-up and development. But suddenly it's as though Saberhagen forgot how to tell a story and is reduced to summarizing the action. It's quite bizarre. I finished the book, but I'm not sure why.

I have read many books about Arthurian legend and Fred Saberhagen's book makes a good addition to the long list of Arthurian fiction. I think that his greatest acheivement with Merlin's Bones is his use of good description and a good book foundation of excepted events in historical connection with Arthurian legend.

The writer, who I was previously never heard of must have been hoping to write a sequel because there were so many loose ends! Someone typed in the reviews that Saberhagen has had "trouble" writing endings - I see that as not a problem because he didn't really write an ending! I like the others found the jump from the future to Amby to Bran and Hakon not so much confusing, but distracting without having much to pull them together expept at the very end. Who, by the way is the Fisher King? I never figured that one out either but I did not spend long reading this book because it was not as interesting as I hoped that it would be. Pick it up if you have the time - the basic plot of the story is fine, the characters (for the most part) interesting, and the twists worth reading - if you prepare yourself not to be thoroughly pleased with the "un"ending.