20 Book challenge - The Lost years of Merlin Book 1

Title: The Lost Years of Merlin

Information:

- Is the first book of "The Lost years of Merlin" series by T.A. Barron, the series is a total of 5 books long

- 270 pages (Including Prologue, which is 10 pages)

- 39 Chapters total

- Is a 2016-2017 Battle of the Books book

- Genre: Realistic Fantasy (Magic and other magical creatures on a magical island)

- Written by T.A Barron (bestselling author)

*(Possible Spoiler Alert)*

The book is based on the premise that a boy and a woman wash up on the beach of Gwynedd (Northwest Wales, England). The boy is taken in by the woman, who claims to be his mother. She tells him his name - Emrys, and the two spend their humble beginnings in Gwynedd for several years. During these years, Emrys is tormented by the town Bully and several other townspeople, this is due to his Mother’s appearance. Around the age of 12, a terrible accident occurs, severely burning the town bully and leaving Emrys permanently blind. In spite of this, Emrys begins to develop magical powers like a second sight. After healing, he decides to leave wales on a raft to find where he may have washed up from.

In the beginning of the book, I felt rather unmotivated to read the book. The first third of the book (about 100 or so pages) is all about Emrys’ upbringing, it was rather boring to read, as nothing really happened besides at the end. But like many other books I have read, this book had a slow start. It laid down the framework to help the reader understand the later parts of the story. However, I feel like it didn’t need to be as lengthy as it was, as taking a third of the pages to start up is in my opinion too long. As the book went on, I got to see how the main character developed as he found out more and more about his past, this made me feel more interested in the book, I have never been really into fantasy books, but perhaps this book could get me into the genre. Nearing the end, I was happy as to how much the characters developed in the book in a short period of time.

Throughout the story, the author makes Emrys’ motivation to leave his mother obvious. The main character wants to leave because he thinks that he’ll find the truth of what he wants to hear, he has asked his mother on several occasions about their life before they washed up, but she always brushed the problems off, this leads to Emrys leaving in some act of rebellion, as he feels like his mother does not trust him. Judging by this book, T.A. Barron seems to not be very effective at hooking the reader into actually reading the book. The beginning, as I mentioned earlier, was not that interesting, and the only reason I kept reading was that I had to for the "Battle of the Books" competition. This need to finish the book revealed to me that T.A. Barron is effective as hooking committed readers, rather than those who just want a quick read. I begrudgingly kept reading, and after the dreaded 1st third of the book, it started to get interesting very quickly.

Overall, I liked the book. It had a slow start, but a strong finish. I will keep reading the rest of the series after Battle of the Books. I have heard that the 2nd book and onwards avoids the slow starts, and are just as good as the 1st.