The Once and Future King
The definitive Arthurian retelling: four novels tracking Arthur from boyhood with Merlyn through the final tragedy. White's is the Camelot that all subsequent versions must reckon with. Funny, anachronistic, heartbreaking.
The middle books plod, with “virtually no action, adventures or quests” and “most of the action was taking place unwritten between chapters,” summarised after the fact rather than dramatised. The tonal whiplash is a real resentment: readers who came for the light opening feel blindsided when it turns heavy and philosophical. Lancelot draws specific hostility as someone who “kills and injures others for little or no reason.” The book “suffers without Merlyn’s presence in later sections.” And the density is a barrier, with readers reporting ten pages a day and at least one abandoning it at page 417 after six months.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
