The Merlin Prophecy Book One: Battle of Kings by M. K. Hume Edition: Paperback Price: $12.65
Fantastic, But Complicated Story - Loved It!, This review is from: The Merlin Prophecy Book One: Battle of Kings (Paperback) The Merlin Prophecy Book One: Battle of Kings by M. K. Hume This was a wonderful book and I highly recommend it but mostly if you like books that delve deeply into ancient history. You should also love books that deal with war - the planning of and the execution of war, because at least 50% of the book is about war and, is very bloody and very descriptive. The fantasy about Myrddion (Merlin) is a very small part of this book. I do assume that Ms Hume is using this book as a stepping stone to the next 2 books where we will hopefully learn much more about Merlin, other than he was a great healer. Myrddion (Merlin) came into this world in a very unfortunate way. His mother was brutally raped and never quite recovers from the horror of it. She suffers from post traumatic syndrome. She will always be taking this rape out on her son in the most horrendous ways. Myrddion has to deal with being called "the Demon Seed" for all of this book and sometimes it serves him well to be thought the product of a Demon and sometimes not. Myrddion is accomplished at nearly everything he sets his mind to - healing, alchemy, planning and building the machines of war, etc.. He is sweet and extremely handsome and was a prophet until his mother tried to bash his brains in with a rock. Now his prophecies seem to just come and go. Myrddion grows from, an infant to about 16 years old in this book, so a lot of time passes even though it doesn't seem like it does. The time that does pass does not always have Myrddion in the forefront. There is a lot of action taking place at all times, but a lot of it will revolve around the Kings and to a lesser extent, the Queens who are fighting for their places in history. This book kept me avidly reading for two days straight and I am really looking forward to the next novel even if I do tend to very lightly skim over some of the battle scenes, stopping to read when something of note is happening. For a person who loves history, this is going to be a treasure trove of information as Ms Hume has done a LOT of research and has added a lot of fact into her fiction. For anyone that likes historical fiction this is going to be a book that you will read over and over - and for Fantasy readers this will be a series to keep an eye on. *ARC PROVIDED BY PUBLISHER*