A review by garbutch
The Lost Years of Merlin by T.A. Barron
3.0
2.5-3 stars. It's not like, a Bad Book, it just is what it is.
The protagonist becomes blind at some point early on but develops a "second sight" where he is basically not blind anymore, but he is seeing through some kind of psychic perception of what his surroundings look like.
I'm not blind so take this with a grain of salt, but it strikes me that most representation of strongly written blind characters tends to be characters who "overcome" blindness in some way with special powers. I don't even know if that's bad, and I know this is specifically in a fantasy genre setting, but it's just... A trope, y'know? I'd like to see enough blind representation in general that it doesn't matter so much.
I also feel like all (two of) the women/girl characters were pretty similar in personality to some degree. Not interchangeable, just similar.
Frankly there weren't a lot of characters anyway and this is supposed to be a children's book that wasn't published particularly recently, and it's probably quite ahead of its time. For the first in a series also it was okay.
But I still like Tamora Pierce books better.
The protagonist becomes blind at some point early on but develops a "second sight" where he is basically not blind anymore, but he is seeing through some kind of psychic perception of what his surroundings look like.
I'm not blind so take this with a grain of salt, but it strikes me that most representation of strongly written blind characters tends to be characters who "overcome" blindness in some way with special powers. I don't even know if that's bad, and I know this is specifically in a fantasy genre setting, but it's just... A trope, y'know? I'd like to see enough blind representation in general that it doesn't matter so much.
I also feel like all (two of) the women/girl characters were pretty similar in personality to some degree. Not interchangeable, just similar.
Frankly there weren't a lot of characters anyway and this is supposed to be a children's book that wasn't published particularly recently, and it's probably quite ahead of its time. For the first in a series also it was okay.
But I still like Tamora Pierce books better.