The Crystal Cave

3.5/5. This wasn't the easiest book to get through, but also not the worst. It was engaging enough and my biggest issue with it is really not so much a flaw on the story's part but more of a personal preference thing. This is quite obviously an Arthurian retelling and I guess I hadn't realised how much this would hinge on what is basically medieval British military history. Nevertheless though, the story did a good job at a proto-magical realism sort of world, where people with some magical power can coexist with the threads of history.

The book starts with an old and wizened Merlin looking back at the very beginnings of his life and the encounter between his parents from whence he was conceived. He begins life as the bastard son of Princess Niniane of South Wales with a mysterious father whose name his mother never confesses even under duress. Even at the tender age of six, Merlin is already showing signs of having inherited his mother's gift of the Sight, a future-seeing ability that comes upon him in flashes and when he least expects it. Meanwhile he discovers a crystal cave near his childhood home and a mysterious tutor, Galapas, who helps to kickstart Merlin's journey into the thick of British warfare and politics, culminating in his part to play in the birth of the child named Arthur.

As a disclaimer, I am not intimately familiar with the Arthurian legend aside from what most of us would know from pop culture. I think this is probably my very first Arthurian retelling.

The writing of this book is very much of its time (from the late 60s). It sometimes even smacks a little of Lord of the Rings. There's a classic feel to the prose akin to LOTR, but yet mostly it's emerging into a more modern style that we would be more familiar of today, and reads a bit a bit like Ursula K Le Guin's Earthsea Cycle, all of these being written and released within 20 years of each other. It is occasionally a bit repetitive when certain statements and events are repeated over and over again, but otherwise it's entrancing and fairly easy to read - certainly a good deal more digestible than Lord of the Rings was.

The biggest issue that I had with this one was just how so much of it was full of battles and movements of war and who won which skirmishes. Kudos to Stewart for either having done ample research on the subject or being able to make up all of these on the spot, but it wasn't really my thing to read. Even aside from the military bits, there was also a lot of long paragraphs, either of description or of action, that I felt were almost unnecessary to read, and I found myself skimming through a lot of these near the end.

For characters, I did like Merlin quite a bit and was very interested to see how he was going to turn from naive young boy to the incredibly famous wizard that we know of today. I was expecting some 80s training montage moment where he goes from zero to hero within a flash of a few years, but that actually didn't happen. Merlin does hone his skills of Sight but it's not spelt out for the readers how, and throughout the whole story he continues to protest that he is no prophet and cannot prophesy at will. He does perform some feats that dramatically improved his reputation in the region as an enigmatic magician, but a lot of it is actually due to his intelligence and quick thinking more than any real magic. After all, being able to see glimpses of the future doesn't help you build a whole structure as he does later in the book.

I did also feel like Stewart wrote this from a Christian perspective. As we know, during the time period this was set in, the territories around Britain were rife with a variety of religions and beliefs, of which Christianity is only one. Merlin, being from Wales, does in fact grow up with that plethora of religions available to him and for the first half of the book remains somewhat open-minded. In the second half of the book or so, though, Merlin becomes inexplicably pretty convinced that monotheism is the way to go. Whether it's Mithras or Apollo or Christ, it's all one and the same to him, and that his powers come from the one God whichever form people choose to believe he takes. Whether or not this reflects Stewart's own beliefs is anyone's guess, but I do feel like some aspects of this was definitely skewed a bit more to the Christian side of things probably as a function of the time and place it was written in.

Seeing that this is one of the few Arthurian retellings written by a woman, I went into this one keeping my eyes peeled for how women were treated. I know the original Arthurian legend is not exactly well-known for feminism and I didn't think that this book was going to rock the boat too much in that aspect, so I had my expectations tempered. There are only 3 notable women in this book, and I'm not sure I'm 100% satisfied with how they were written but in different ways.

Firstly, there is Niniane, Merlin's mother. She shows grit, conviction, and loyalty in the way she absolutely refuses to give up Merlin's father's identity, even when several characters in the book (some of them her own family members) are truly awful to her and threaten in so many different ways to spill the beans. She's also the only other person in the book to be able to use the Sight, but yet it is said that, being a woman, she only can use it in the matters of love. That was... really unnecessary. Why? Not all women are interested in love. Not all men are interested in war. Plus, Niniane barely gets any lines at all in the book and lives almost like a shadow.

Secondly, there is Keri, a girl who Merlin later meets and is the first girl who Merlin is actually romantically and/or sexually interested in. She is shown as being rather forward as well as being quite straightforward when it comes to sexual liaisons, but yet also mercenary and manipulative. Again, she barely gets any lines in the book.

Lastly, there is Lady Ygraine, the Duchess of Cornwall who will come to play an important role in the way history unfolded. She gets significantly more lines than either of the above two, but only properly appears in all of one chapter. Ygraine is by far the most interesting of the female characters. She has Keri's forwardness with sex and isn't ruthless or unfeeling, but yet she possesses ambition and intelligence befitting that of a ruler, which Merlin also acknowledges to himself. Yet, Ygraine is also depicted as also a little bit wily and deceptive, and implied to be akin to Helen of Troy, The Woman who brings (wise) men to ruin because she's such a temptation to them.

So all in all, not the best female representation imo, though I gave this book a lot of leeway given that it was written in the late 60s. I would consider reading the second book but the writing was so heavy that I feel like I need to have a good, long interval before continuing.