When you in the series, (read about a writer unknown to you, who has plans to deliver a twenty five volume new take on the King Arthur Legend, beginning with this trilogy, you would maybe roll yours eyes and question just how good something is likely to be. Well, the simple answer is that 'Merlin begets Arthur', the first trilogy of this huge endeavour, (the fourth book will be with us shortly), is about as good as you could imagine it would be. I can't profess to have read a great many Arthurs apart from the source material and the likes of Rosemary Sutcliffe and just recently John Matthews, but I do have a great love and respect for Bernard Cornwell's Warlord Trilogy - which BC himself deems his personal favourite of all his books. Scott Telek's Arthur, we don't even meet in the first three books and that's because the stage is dominated by his version of Merlin, his conception, manipulation of three successive kings and ruin of two of them, and all before he has reached no more than thirteen without having any real empathy for human lives. This makes for a brilliant slant on the legend and the figure of Merlin, because he truly is only thirteen, even though he chooses to only appear so when with his mother. Ah, yes, Meylinde, (the name Scott gives her) is the first great triumph of the series. The quietly horrific story of the ruin of her family, impregnation by the devil, confinement and Merlin's first few years are a positive triumph, surely the first time anyone has written this tale, given scarcely any lines in the original sources. It's here that Scott Telek's greatest talent as a writer, (and there are a fair few!) comes to the light as I have rarely read anyone with such a grasp on a character's or characters inner dialogue, let alone the acuity of his psychological grasp of what makes folks tick.
But Meylinde and Merlin are only the start, (although perhaps my favourite of the books) as things grow progressively darker with the story of The Sons of Constance, although we have to dispose of the usurper Vorgigern before the aforesaid sons can kick of their own troubled reigns' In a series of three books filled with glories of character, landscape and the most carefully constructed of plots, always - if they at all can be - taken entirely from the sources and only further enhanced when there have been only a few lines for the author to play with - it is the incredibly moving and so memorably written sequence where the about-to-be beseiged Vortigern, disguises himself so that he can wander at will among first of all a few of his people and then the countryside which he clearly loves. The sequence is elegiac and tinged with the sadness that this flawed man was ready to understand the error of his ways. After his inevitable and appropriately glossed over end, it is the turn of the brothers Pendragon and Uther to bestride the stage, eager and ready for rule, with the more warrior like Uther happy to play second fiddle to his golden brother. But always behind the scenes there is Merlin, the brothers inherited curse and blessing, depending on your point of view, with that inability of his to feel empathy for humans. Only long after Pendragon has been laid to rest in a brilliantly conjured Stonehenge does this flaw in Merlin cause the greatest destruction - as we all know by now - to the weakening and besotted Uther and Igrayne of Cornwall, the woman who he loves yet may not have, unless --- Again Scott Telek evokes the awful madness, obsession and actual physical pain that is love and its predictably tragic end. Except that rarely does the author do that, or indeed ever behave in an unpredictable or expected way. - he's just far too good to sell you short.
I do have a small issue about the way he fronts it out at the beginning of the last book, The Void Place by apologising for the sexual assault to follow, because I do not think it is ever one in the way he himself portrays it and because he covers all that in the extra material at the end more than adequately. I've always thought that the jury is essentially out on just what you would call this magic haunted encounter, but with Merlin as unfeeling as he is here, his mother makes clear that the rape, if rape it is, is Merlin's more than it is the confused and unhappy Uther's, who does not enter into this deception happily.
There is also the question of Christianity, which is weighed up cleverly and balanced beautifully, where we can have redemption and penance, but wisely there is no mention of sin, as Arthur is a tale which for most of us must have none of that. And I suppose in conclusion, it's the way that Scott Telek has chosen to tell the tale that is most important in the end, for in choosing to do it in this way, he's given the story of Arthur, and of Merlin, Uther and Igrayne back to us - for which we already owe him a real debt of gratitude.
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Poor Boy Sixtyish
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Great book
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