Reviews
lancelot sucks fr
and then the threw the sword as far into the water as he might; and there came an arm and a hand above the water and met it, and caught it, and so shook it thrice and brandished, and then vanished away the hand with the sword in the water.
i am not sure where i stand with this book, while i tremendously enjoyed the experience of buddy reading it i also struggled and hated it in some parts. maybe it was the copy i owned that made it such a chore for me to get through in some moments but i genuinely had to remind myself to keep going because i contemplated dnf'ing so many times?
i was obviously very much aware of the gist of the story, i had read bits and pieces here and there over the years but never completely from a to z, so i'm grateful i got to check that of my list but the experience made me both appreciate and loathe it. this review will be focused on my experience and less so on the contents of the book because it literally took me so long i forgot most of the details already? but i will admit that the last chapter, arthur's death, was the highlight of the book for me and i couldn't put it down. every sentence had me eagerly wanting to get to the next one to know what was going to happen because finally, something interesting was happening. not that there weren't interesting bits before that, just that this chapter had it consistently the whole time compared to earlier chapters where it felt a bit redundant of a knight going on a knight, meeting another knight and immediately hitting them on the head. this felt like it was actually going somewhere, not just running in circles. obviously another highlight was lancelot getting shot in the butt with an arrow in the forest, that genuinely made me laugh out loud and will probably stay in my head for years to come.
but yeah, i knew the treatment of the women of these stories wasn't great but some buts had me flat out gagging in disgust, we are not here just to be a means to an end or a punching bag. some knights definitely did lose several places in my esteem.
but yeah, all in all i think i enjoyed it enough to give it a 3* rating, unfortunately i wish i had a more enjoyable read. maybe with the caxton edition? one day i'll give it a try, but for now i'm good. i still dearly love these characters though, they've been with me my whole life and i'm not about to let them go because of what a little 15th century man decided to write.
also i'm sorry but tristram and lancelot should have kissed (they actually did. many times. gay rights!)
Although this has always been one of my favorite stories, I never got aroud to reading the original. It somewhat differs from what is generally portrayed in movies and such, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. This illustrated junior library edition has beautiful illustrations -as its name indicates- that made the reading even more enjoyable. On the other hand, the one thing that kept bothering me through the entire book was the indisciminate, annoying and amateurish use of the words "and" and "then", particularly at the beginning of both paragraphs and sentences.
I could not finish this, this is my first DNF ever. I am still counting it as read since I did read basically half the book and listened to over a day on the audiobook. The same thing just kept happening over and over again. There would be a knight needing to save a damsel in distress, the only difference in the chapters would be a different name for the characters. I also now know why the show is called 'Merlin' and not King Arthur as I feel like the wizard is the main character. I know this book is called King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table but it should be called The Knights of the Round Table as they are what this story is really about.
