Carms' Books

Book 13 "The Once and Future King" T H White

Well this is another one of those squillions of books on the Arthurian Legend, the difference being this one has been around for a while now. It was written in 1939 and has some interesting parallels to World War I & II. I love everything Arthurian, always have, and this one has been on my meant to read list for a while now. Unfortunately it wasn't as fantastic as I was hoping it would be. It is actually five novellas that have been made into one volume, which is how White originally wanted it - the first being the sword in the stone - the same story made into the disney flick. Some parts of the story are really good, however some parts are quite slow, and White has a bizarre tendency to go off on crazy non-sensical tangents which is a little disconcerting at times. All in all it wasn't a bad read, but definately not up there with some of the other takes on the legend that I've read.

2.5 Knights of the round table.

Book 14 "The Second Generation" Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman

Ok ok, it's a Dragonlance book, but I never played Dungeons and Dragons!! :o) This is basically set after the Legends and Chronicles and is a set of 5 short stories telling about some of the offspring of the characters from the other sets of books. For the most part, the stories are really great. They reference many of the old characters and actively involve some of the others, including Tanis, Caramon and Raistlin, characters who I particularly like. The best of the stories were probably The Legacy and The Sacrifice. The first was about one of Caramon's sons who is a fledgling mage named Palin. He takes after his uncle Raistlin who was the most powerful mage on Krynn and tried to take over the world. He is summoned to the Tower of High Sorcery and has to go through a gruelling test. Very cool. The Sacrifice is about Tanis and Laurana's son Gil, caught in the policitcal in fighting between the two factions of elves. Gil has to make a difficult decision to save the lives of his people. Yeah ok, so it's not Shakespeare, but I love 'em. There a good easy read and the characters are cool.

3.5 Kids of the Lance.

BBFN!
:o)