Book review: The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart

[kilroy]

Print date: 1970 (20s: 1, 50s: 1, 60s: 4, 70s: 9, 80s: 7, 90s: 6, 00s: 17)

There was never any chance that I wouldn't like this book. It's Arthurian. It's about Merlin. Everyone I know who read it loved it. And it's possibly my mom's all-time favorite book. I've been meaning to read this since I was around twelve, but for whatever reason I never got around to it. Now I have.

It's one of the best depictions of magic I've seen. Here magic is fundamentally uncontrollable, incomprehensible, and tragic-- trading a little power for a lot of cost and never losing sight of the fact that There Are Things Bigger Than You Are. What magic actually does is tiny-- almost insignificant-- but with repercussions that change everything. Most of "magic" is just rumors people start around people being clever.

The characterization is sharp both in the sense that characters stand out immediately and that the author shows a keen perception of human nature. Nobody's perfect and nobody's one-dimensional here; everyone has secrets and surprises. There are a few points in the book where I had to go back and re-read sections because I just couldn't believe Stewart allowed her characters to do something. The actions always make sense, but they give you this sense of "Wow, this really isn't the kind of story I thought it was."

The book moves through Merlin's entire childhood and well into his adulthood through something like six distinct acts, each of which is engaging in a different way. There's a breadth of smaller stories here which don't feel like smaller stories; the novel as a whole manages to be one continuous narrative thread while actually doing a dozen entirely different things. Most of the foreshadowing is in-character (which is a nice change), but there are one or two places ("I hope you die betrayed by a woman!") that are almost unremarked in the story but the audience can see things the characters don't.

Really my only problem with the book is a personal preference thing; Stewart spends an awful lot of time describing geography. This cliff is named this now but that then, looks exactly like this for so many yards, faces west, is two shades darker than the rock surrounding it, has these two species of birds on it, and in the spring has beautiful pink flowers, etc. I tend to think of it as the Tolkien problem. Some people love this kind of description because it really puts them into the story. I connect with the people as opposed to the places so I end up skimming those bits. It certainly wasn't enough to put me off the book, but I did start getting that "Oh no, not again" feeling by the end.

I suspect that most adults will-- like me-- know before they read the first page whether or not they're going to like this book. If you find Arthurian mythology engaging, it's a must-read. But if you're a kid... I can imagine this book being that book for you. The one that opens doors you didn't even know were there.

Verdict: Keep and read the other books. (29/77)

Page count: 484 (15715 total)

Completed: 45 (20 female authors, 24 male authors, 1 anthology)
Rejected: 32 (20 male authors, 12 female authors)

Next book due: Some Kindle book, Thursday 3/31

Comments

[cereta]

Yes! This was not quite THAT book for me (oddly, I read The Wicked Day first), but it set the bar for my Arthurian experiences.

[jorin.livejournal.com]

What's funny, in my opinion, is that the 'Tolkien' problem you mention isn't nearly so bad in Tolkien's writings as in a lot of other places. The worst offender I ever found was Poul Anderson's "The Boat of a Million Years", which I felt took about that long to read. (Still a good book, though the ending kind of leaves you feeling like there wasn't one.)

I'm definitely like you in that I don't really appreciate the in-depth descriptions of fundamentally irrelevant minutiae. Some can be great for helping to establish the world and the background, but too much just gets in the way of the story.

[kilroy]

This is almost certainly true. I'm biased by the memory of literally falling asleep reading The Lord of the Rings; it's the one that sticks out in my mind, hence he got the name even though he's not the worst offender. :-)

[brigid]

This is one of my absolute favorite series EVER, bar none, and I actually recently reread the first three books and am currently reading "The Wicked Day."

Her stuff is pretty dated, especially with regard to gender roles, but she's a super great author in general. And her non-Arthurian stuff? Her female protagonists frequently do not know how to drive (that is a man's role! And my maternal grandmother never drove, because it is so manly!) but they are still pretty take charge and kick ass and brave. I really wish she'd been able to have stronger, less-evil female characters in the Merlin/Arthur books (and what kept her? societal norms? Editor's suggestion? Lack of imagination? I do like how later in the series it's kind of a plot point that Merlin really doesn't understand women and this causes problems for him... women in general are painted a bit more sympathetically as the series progresses).

I think a lot of her seemingly extraneous descriptions are in part because she's talking about areas that she knows very well (she lives there), that have gone by different names over the years. So she's trying to ground her audience in the location even when she's calling it by an older name. Further, the topography of the area then and the area now is super different. Like, when she goes on and on and on about the thick dark primeval forests with the sun slanting down and shadows and gold etc? There are virtually no forests anymore. Not ones you can get lost in.

I ran a short WoD: Hunters game inspired by "Wildfire at Midnight," a book which features a snarky comment about a young Ian McKellen, and which has as a plot point a hotel that doesn't have electricity at night because they are out in the middle of nowhere.