Merlin's Blade, by Robert Treskillard

My apologies for falling out of the blogosphere for more than three months.

Merlin's Blade is a pretty-well-written Arthurian romance, the first book in a planned series. It was published as Teen Fiction by Zondervan. There is a mixing of true Christianity and elements that cannot, in real life, coexist with true Christianity. I know that bothers some readers, and, if you are among the readers who would be bothered by such a mixing, be forewarned. I would feel comfortable allowing my own children to read Merlin's Blade.

The story is fairly clean of objectionable elements. There is no salacious sexuality, and the violence is not terribly gory.

There were a couple places where the writing needed a bit more editing, in my opinion. For instance, at one place in the book the bad guys have surrounded the good guys, are in fact on the same wagon with the good guys. The scene closes without a resolution. When the next scene opens the good guys are far away from the bad guys and locked in a building, but there's no explanation of how that change happened. How did the good guys get away from the bad guys? Such an oversight disappoints me. That example was not the only such mistake, but such mistakes were few and overall the writing was strong and good.

I would recommend this book, with the qualifications to be found earlier in this post, to those readers who enjoying Arthurian romances and fantasy novels.