From Library Journal
Prolific storyteller Yolen brings together ten of her own stories about Merlin, "Archmage" of Camelot. As befits a "shape-shifter," each story presents a different figure of Merlin, none being definitive. Yolen's "revisionist mythology" includes idiosyncratic versions of Merlin's birth and of the episode of the sword in the stone, as well as an original vision of a community of nuns on a fenland island who forge steel blades for Arthur's knights. In "Epitaph," an archaeological team and the Prince of Wales proclaim the finding of Merlin's body to a roomful of skeptical newspersons. Yolen's limpid prose gains an aura of otherness by her skillful use of archaisms. Arthurian and fantasy collections will welcome Merlin's Booke . Barbara J. Dunlap, City Coll., CUNY
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.
