A review by meredith_mccaskey
The Once and Future King, by T.H. White
4.0
For the first volume of this four-volume tome, I listened to the narration by Neville Jason. It was a perfect way to begin. Neville Jason is fantastic– he perfectly captures the lighthearted mood of The Sword in the Stone and he's so good at voices that not only did he not re-use a single voice for any character in a very extensive cast, he made each character so distinctive that I always knew exactly who was speaking. Impressive!
I really didn't know what to expect going into The Once And Future King other than that it would be about the Arthurian legends.
Volume 1 is laugh-out-loud funny. At least, it was for me, because I love British humor, especially this kind of British humor. I was a total sucker for the Dark Age knights who talked in Victorian Good Old Boys' Club slang, and for the way that the fantastic and magical elements of the legends were woven seamlessly through in such a way as to make them feel quite plausible, almost ordinary. I loved the Wart.
So it's a good thing that Volume 1 captured my interest and affection, not because it all goes downhill from there, except it sort of does. Arthur is a tragedy, after all. In fact T.H. White goes out of his way to remind you of this, over and over. You know that there's not going to be a happy ending. But you keep reading anyway, because White has made the archetypical characters so human and accessible and sympathetic, and you keep hoping, deep down, that just MAYBE it won't end the way you know it has to end.
I really didn't know what to expect going into The Once And Future King other than that it would be about the Arthurian legends.
Volume 1 is laugh-out-loud funny. At least, it was for me, because I love British humor, especially this kind of British humor. I was a total sucker for the Dark Age knights who talked in Victorian Good Old Boys' Club slang, and for the way that the fantastic and magical elements of the legends were woven seamlessly through in such a way as to make them feel quite plausible, almost ordinary. I loved the Wart.
So it's a good thing that Volume 1 captured my interest and affection, not because it all goes downhill from there, except it sort of does. Arthur is a tragedy, after all. In fact T.H. White goes out of his way to remind you of this, over and over. You know that there's not going to be a happy ending. But you keep reading anyway, because White has made the archetypical characters so human and accessible and sympathetic, and you keep hoping, deep down, that just MAYBE it won't end the way you know it has to end.