"The Sword In the Stone"

The first book in "The Once and Future King" is entitled "The Sword In the Stone". This is pretty much a title that tells all for anyone that has ever heard the King Arthur legend. In this book we are brought to a castle that lies close beside the Forest Sauvage. There are two young boys that are being brought up in the castle and they have a tutor named Merlyn, who we find is a wizard that is cursed to live backwards in time. Merlyn appears to favor one of the boys over the other and he is nicknamed the Wart. This is because Merlyn has foreseen that Wart will become king when the current king meets his demise. The Wart encounters many adventures as different species of animals that Merlyn turns him into and learns several lessons that the wizard already knows will become useful when Wart becomes king. Eventually the boys grow up and Merlyn departs and Wart is left to be the squire of the other boy Kay whose destiny is to be a knight. One fateful day while in London Wart unknowingly pulls a sword from a stone (a task that many knights has not been able to accomplish) and is crowned King Arthur.
The language in this book was rather interesting. For the most part it was easy enough to understand but there was a few rocky areas. The worst of these was the poor blubbering porcupine that the Wart stumbles across in one of his many journeys as an animal. Another rather difficult character to understand was King Pellinore who consistently added "what" to the end of every sentence he spoke and would completely confuse himself and anyone listening. The third language piece that I found interesting is in the very beginning of the book in chapter one when Sir Ector and Sir Grummore are talking with one another they begin to speak like British aristocrats as opposed to the medieval knights that they really are.
In the very beginning of the book there was also several words that I could not understand. A few of these words being, villein, wattle and daub, scythes, jesses, and hoved. Several words were in our modern dictionary when I looked them up but many were not.
My favorite parts of this book are when Wart gets turned into the many different animals. Perhaps my favorite of these is when he is turned into the badger. He encounters a porcupine whose reaction is just ridiculous and humorous to the reader and then we learn several things from the badger. He gives us insight into how he feels the humans and animals were made and how man came to be a tyrant over all of the animals. From his meeting with the badger and and the porcupine we can learn that absolute power corrupts. He was not at all hungry until he came across the porcupine and decided to make him beg (and sing) for his life and man was a fairly humble creature in the badgers story until given dominion to rule over all other species.
All in all I find this story quite intriguing. It is quite amazing how historically it is portrayed and how truthful it comes off to be when it is swimming with so much fantasy. We are even provided with insight into how several species of animals and birds view the world and hear how they would speak if they could. It gives a certain twist to the world that leaves me up to my knees in the story with no real need to want to dig myself out.