I so wanted to like this book. I really wanted to enjoy this book, as the story of Merlin has always fascinated me. I enjoyed Lawhead's previous book in the Pendragon Cycle, Taliesin, so I thought this one would be a hit as well. Alas, I just could not get into the story, finding it hard to slog through; so it, unfortunately, lands in my DNF pile.

A few things:

First, I think Merlin has helped me to realize that I am just not a fan of first-person narration, or at least Lawhead's style of it (because now that I think about it, there are first-person novels I have enjoyed quite a bit). There's an adage of "show, don't tell" when you want to write a good story, and I just could not get it out of my mind that Merlin was telling us the story and not showing us what happened.

Second, I think my issue with the first-person narrative was not helped by Lawhead's prose. In many places, especially as you get further into the novel, he gets quite verbose and I found myself saying, "Alright already. I get it. Let's move on now."

Finally, whereas Bradley's Mists of Avalon did everything it could to eschew and denigrate Christianity, I think Lawhead goes too far in the other direction. Merlin practically becomes a Christian missionary in this tale, and it just didn't seem to fit for me. The bad fit isn't due to my personal religious background, by any means: I am a Catholic deacon studying to be a priest myself! But again, some of the heavy ideology and the way it was presented just did not seem to mesh well with this part of the Pendragon Cycle.

Perhaps I just need more patience! Perhaps this simply wasn't the right time for me to read this particular book and I will come back to it in the future. In a way, I certainly hope this is the case because I really wanted to enjoy this one.