#60. King of the Middle March

King of the Middle March by Kevin Crossley-Holland
Third in the Arthur Trilogy

Pages: 396
Finished: Aug. 19, 2007
Reason for Reading: next, and last, in the trilogy
First Published: 2003
Genre: YA, arthurian historical fantasy
Rating: 3/5

First sentence:

Away east over the thousand-tongued sea, with all its sweet promises, its stabs and sudden rushes, one silver-gold blade of light.



Recommend: If you've read the first two in this trilogy then, yes, I recommend you read this last book. With this final book, I would definitely say this is a YA book as opposed to a children's book such as the first two. King of the Middle March is much darker than the other's in this series. The majority of the book takes place as the middle ages Arthur is journeying to the crusades and Jerusalem, where he sees much violence and rape. There is one scene in particular that was very disturbing. This book is also much more historical fiction than fantasy and I was a little disappointed that it took so long into the book before we were shown a vision of King Arthur in the Seeing-stone. What made this book less enjoyable than the others was that since it was set mostly away from the Middle-March most of the familiar characters were not in the book this time. But overall, the story was enjoyable and a satisfying ending to the trilogy.

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