The Once and Future King

So this was a big book. I don't mean that in terms of long (though it's that as well), but it has scope. It's one of those fantasy classics I've always meant to read but never got around to until it was on a convenient book club list. Parts of it I really liked. Parts of it I found myself skimming. Parts were magically transportive (Am I making up that word? I might be). Parts were woefully dated. Let me break this down.

Of the four parts of this book, I liked the first and the fourth the best. “The Sword and the Stone,” apart from taking me back to the Disney features of my youth, was utterly charming. It's a children's story that an adult can enjoy, similar in tone to The Hobbit or The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. At times it gets a little saccharine, particularly when White uses the animals as metaphors for his own philosophy, but on the whole I enjoyed the mix of Arthurian legend with anachronistic humor. I like how White takes advantage of his modern perspective to write the backwards-aging, Merlyn. It reminds the reader that this isn't a found text, but a modern retelling with the benefit of modern hindsight. Again some of those parallels hit a little hard for my taste, but I still enjoyed the device.

The book two opens, and Morgause is boiling a cat alive for fun.

The tone shift is so abrupt it took me time to adjust to it. White retells the story in an appropriate tone for the characters' ages, not the readers'. As Arthur graduates from adolescence and is thrust into the dark world of the adult court, so is the reader. For me, this was the part where the philosophy made the most sense and didn't seem as blatant. I felt Arthur's struggles to reconcile England with Merlyn's teachings. However, this section also introduces Guenevar, and there the book starts to falter.
White does not have a real understanding of women, and Guenevar makes me realize exactly why Marion Zimmer Bradley wrote “Mists of Avalon.”

The third book is almost entirely the story of Guenevar and Lancelot, and that just isn't to my palate. My reading slowed down here, and I just felt bad for Arthur. Most of my favorite side characters were absent at this point, and I just didn't have the patience for the world's best-known love triangle. I do enjoy that White makes Lancelot homely, and indeed he is brutally honest about most of the characters' age and physical appearance. From Pellinore and Piggy to Guenevar and Lancelot, everyone is described as a real human being and loved for that humanity, not any physical overlay. I appreciated that, but I still wished this book was not so very, very long.

I was faltering with the story until the fourth book where Mordred really comes onto the scene. White uses Mordred as a symbol for Hitler and references to anti-semitism, the SS, and the Hitler Youth are all very clear. Personally, though, I like taking that character at face value. Mordred is easily the most complex character, his motivations clear and entirely valid while his means are as twisted and terrifying as the history he represents. He manipulates Arthur's own impervious sense of justice against him, his family's sense of honor against them, and the entire country's sense of patriotism against it. It's a brilliant parallel on its own, but then we listen to Mordred speak. His language is maybe a bit modern, but that only serves to intrigue the reader. His confrontation with Guenevar after he's sent Arthur off is my favorite scene in the book. The way White describes him as “acting” instead of living is one of the most perfect phrasings I've ever heard. This fascinating antagonist brought me back into the story for entirely different reasons than I was first engaged.

The Once and Future King hasn't become one of my top fantasy classics, but I definitely have an appreciation for White's literary range and philosophical ideals. The slow parts may have been slow, but the fast parts made my heart race along. If you have time and haven't read it yet, you won't regret it.