This is one of the few trivial tricks - I cannot call it power - left to me now that I am old and stripped at last down to man. With the later memories it is different they come back, some of them, hot and shadowed, things seen in the fire. The memories that come back to me here in the dark are seen with the new young eyes of childhood they are so far gone from me, with their pain no longer present, that they unroll like pictures of something that happened, not to me, not to the bubble of bone that this memory used to inhabit, but to another Merlin as young and light and free of the air and spring winds as the bird she named me for. The colours are brighter than they were, of that I am sure. Even the scenes of my far childhood come back to me now sharp and high-coloured and edged with brightness, like the pattern of a fruit tree against a white wall, or banners in sunlight against a sky of storm. This is true of all old men, that the recent past is misted, while distant scenes of memory are clear and brightly coloured. The years since then seem to me now more dim and faded than the earlier years, as if my life were a growing tree which burst to flower and leaf with him, and now has nothing more to do than yellow to the grave. I am an old man now, but then I was already past my prime when Arthur was crowned King. THE CRYSTAL CAVE was ahead of its time when Mary Stewart decided to tell the Arthurian Legend from the point of view of Merlin.To the Memory of MOLLIE CRAIG with my love MERLIN O Merlin in your crystal cave Deep in the diamond of the day, Will there ever be a singer Whose music will smooth away The furrow drawn by Adam's finger Across the meadow and the wave? Or a runner who'll outrun Man's long shadow driving on, Burst through the gates of history, And hang the apple on the tree? Will your sorcery ever show The sleeping bride shut in her bower, The day wreathed in its mound of snow, And Time locked in his tower? - Edwin Muir PROLOGUE THE PRINCE OF DARKNESS

If you’re trying to introduce friends to fantasy, this is a benign first step.

The books are still in print and are available in even small libraries due to their popularity. The quality of the writing and storytelling hasn’t diminished with age, likely because of the care Stewart took to research her subject and the locales. I first read this series when I was in middle school and have read it several times since, including the two Arthur-focused books after the Merlin trilogy.

Told in first-person PoV as though it were an autobiography, Stewart writes about Merlin’s childhood as he travels across Britain, the people he encounters, and the discovery of his magic–all in her lovely prose with detailed attention to the landscape and era. The first book of Mary Stewart’s Merlin trilogy, THE CRYSTAL CAVE ( Amazon), was written in 1970 and continues to be one of the most accessible novelizations of the mythos surrounding the Arthurian legends.

The crystal cave by mary stewart