‘Celtika’ – Robert Holdstock (Gollancz Books)

One thing I haven’t got the hang of, just yet, is reviewing ‘Book Three’ of a trilogy without having read the other two first. That’s a lot of story to try and get your head around! Robert Holdstock’s ‘The Broken Kings’ has been sat on the shelf (for a while now) for that very reason so I thought I’d buy myself a copy of ‘Celtika’ (first in the ‘Merlin Codex’ series) and start from there. Having read ‘Celtika’, I have to say that I’m not sure whether I’ll read any more…
Any wizard or sorcerer that you find in a fantasy book will inevitably derive from one aspect (or another) of the Merlin ‘myth’, you can’t get away from the man! Holdstock takes the myth in a bold new direction and begins to tell the story of Merlin’s youth and the times before he met King Arthur. I use the term ‘youth’ in its loosest sense, as Merlin is already thousands of years old when we first meet him! He is on a quest to find his friend Jason (as in ‘Jason and the Argonauts’) and put right a wrong that took place in Antiquity. Merlin’s magic will be in great demand but every time he uses it he will have to surrender some of his carefully protected youth…
I am in awe of the concept behind this book, King Arthur’s ‘Merlin’ was always a mysterious figure and ‘Celtika’ fleshes out some of the background information in a way that appears consistent with what we already know. I also really liked the way that Holdstock used characters like Merlin and Jason to bridge the gap between Antiquity and the Dark Ages, I thought it was a great idea and very much like a more sober version of the superhero ‘team ups’ that you find in comics.
Having said all this though, I found it a real shame that the tone Holdstock employs does not do the story justice (considering it’s potential). It’s a very dry and scholarly affair that does not adequately reflect the passions that you know must be running through the characters. I also thought that some of the more descriptive passages could have been pruned, allowing the plot to take centre stage. It’s almost as if Holdstock wrote a book in the classic ‘saga’ style but forgot that his audience was from the 21st century… It was a real chore to read and what made it worse was that flashes of brilliance only served to remind me how good the story could have been.
A great concept but flawed in it’s execution, I may still read ‘The Broken Kings’ but there isn’t a lot to recommend it so far…

Four out of Ten.