Book Review: Myths & Legends: Knights of the Round Table by Daniel Mersey

Pros: quick summaries of notable stories, timeline of when stories were written, interesting text boxes with additional information, mentions alternate spellings/versions

Cons: as mentioned in the introduction there are too many knights and stories to cover them all

As with the other books in Osprey’s Myths and Legends series, this is a great introduction if you’re interested in Arthurian Legends.  The author, Daniel Mersey, wrote a volume on King Arthur, and this volume on the knights is meant to accompany it in fleshing out the legends.  

The book has entertaining synopses of several of the earliest legends about Arthur’s knights, told by Chretien de Troyes and his contemporaries in the late 12th Century.  There are several stories about Lancelot and Gawain, as well as Tristan and Isolde, Yvain, Erec, Balin and Beaumains.

If you don’t know much about the knights, this is a fantastic introduction, with text boxes breaking up the stories that have added information regarding where different characters were popular, alternate spellings, which ones potentially came first, etc.  The literary timeline’s also great, showing when the different stories were written.

It’s an attractive edition with reprints of several images that accompanied older editions of the stories as well as new illustrations by Alan Lathwell.

Of course, with such a slim volume a lot is going to be left out.  The author mentions that in his introduction and includes a supplementary reading and watching list (including preferred translations for the texts) for those who want to learn more.

Book Review: Wizards: From Merlin to Faust by David & Lesley McIntee

Illustrated by Mark Stacey

Pros: covers several wizards, lots of good information

Cons: too short!

Like the other books in Osprey’s Myths and Legends series, Wizards is a great jumping off point for further research on the topic.  The book covers a variety of wizards throughout history, first through an engaging story and then explaining what we know about the historical person or people that gave rise to the myths.  Some of the wizards you’ll encounter in this collection are Hermes, Virgil, Zhang Guo Lao, Nicholas Flamel and Dr. John Dee.  There’s a great mix of well known and not so well known figures and while most of the wizards mentioned are Western, there are a few famous Eastern wizards as well.  There are some great images, both historic and new ones commissioned for this volume.  

As with the other books, it is simply a beginners guide, and as such is definitely too short.  But it’s a great volume and if you’re interested in wizards, alchemy, the occult or fantasy, you’ll find this an interesting read.