The Merlin Spiral Trilogy: Merlin’s Blade (Book 1) by Robert Treskillard

⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Click on the image to view this book in Goodreads.

A strange meteorite.
A deadly enchantment.
And only Merlin can destroy it.

A meteorite brings a mysterious black stone whose sinister power ensnares everyone except Merlin, the blind son of a swordsmith. Soon, all of Britain will be under its power, and he must destroy the stone—or die trying.

Synopsis from Goodreads.

Merlin’s Blade is a little know allegorical fantasy that has quite a punch packed between the pages. Though it was published by a press that I previously have not liked for its poor quality, Merlin’s Blade was a pleasant surprise.

This book is written from multiple points of perspective. It mostly keeps within the main 3-7 characters, yet it does bounce around often. Merlin, Owain, and Garth were the main characters it stuck to, however. Though I liked many of the characters fairly well, Merlin and Owain were my favorites. However, I had a problem with the number of characters and their names. The more and more the story progressed, the more characters there were, which meant the more POVs there were. This made it HIGHLY confusing. Not to mention the characters had extremely confusing names! Many of which looked similar! It was very annoying.

Along with the too weirdly named and numerous characters, the writing was fairly poor. Now I am not implying that the grammar and use of proper English were incorrect. I am saying that the story-telling was poor. The author was not very good and explaining what was going on. The descriptions that should have been in place were, more often than not, not implemented. Together these two points made it very hard to follow along with the story.

However, the story was awesome! It was deeply thought through, beautifully allegorical, and exciting down the very last bit. There were no anti-climatic parts. The climax lasted for several chapters! The story was driven perfectly!

Triggers: violence (decapitations, fairly detailed descriptions of blood-loss, etc.) and black magic (evil chanting, worshiping, and the summoning of false gods). However, I’d like to mention that this last one is, seeing as this book is allegorical, is perceived as very wrong. The idol the villains follow represented sin and how its desires are so beautiful and alluring, yet in the end, it is our death. The book was very clear about the evils of the villains and their idol.

Overall, this was a marvelous allegorical fantasy re-imagination of the legend of Merlin. I’d recommend it to all fantasy-loving teenagers and older!

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Thanks for reading my review! Please note that I would have rated this book 4-4.5 stars if it weren’t for the poor writing and too numerous characters.

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What’s a fantasy book that you’ve read lately that surprised you? For good or bad. Let me know in the comments! God bless you!

Ciao.

If only our eyes saw souls instead of bodies how different our ideals of beauty would be.

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