The Last Enchantment

by Pa Rock
Reader

Lady Mary Stewart began writing her Merlin Trilogy (The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, and The Last Enchantment) in the early days of 1968 after doing a monumental amount of research on legends and histories surrounding King Arthur..  It was over a decade later, in 1979, that she was finally able to set her pen aside after completing the final volume.   (While it is likely she used a typewriter, these stories are so beautifully told and lovingly crafted that one is left with the sense that they could have been put to paper with a quill!)

The books, which weave their way through the legends surrounding King Arthur, are told through the voice of Merlin, the King’s “enchanter.”  The first two volumes tell the story of Merlin’s youth as a bastard grandson of a minor Welsh king, to his ascendancy as a prophet of the first two kings of all Britain.  It is in his closeness to the new line of royalty (the first two kings are actually his father, and his uncle) that Merlin is able to arrange the conception of the third King of all Britain, a child whose mother, although she was not destined to raise the boy, insisted on naming him “Arthur.”    Arthur is hidden (with the King’s blessing) by Merlin for the first fourteen years of his life, and when it comes time for the boy to learn and claim his destiny, it is his cousin, Merlin, who makes that happen.

The third volume of this set, The Last Enchantment, describes Arthur’s early years on the throne as he struggles to keep Britain unified and the Saxons contained.   Merlin is at the young king’s side during much of those early days as the monarch works to make Britain a safe and secure place for all of his subjects.  It is in this third volume that Merlin plans and initially supervises the construction of Camelot, falls in love, and is buried alive in his beloved cave at Bryn Myrddin.  The pages of The Last Enchantment, like those of the first two volumes in this series, turn easily – and quickly!

After completing this monumental work, Lady Stewart chose to revisit it and add a fourth volume, The Wicked Day, which chronicles the conflict between King Arthur and his bastard son, Mordred, a child who was conceived with a bastard princess before Arthur realized that she was his half-sister.  The Wicket Day will be the next book out of my bucket and onto the bedside nightstand.