Fiction Featuring Merlin - Novels and Plays

Novels and Plays

• M.K. Hume portrays Merlin in her Prophecy trilogy from a young boy born of an apparent demon and whose life brings him to the service of a local healer who trains him in the ways. Hume characterises him as without magical power, but infilicted with future visons brought on by seizure-like bouts. His adventures from boy to man lead him into the service of powerful and feared kings, struggling against a Saxon invasion. His journey to seek knowledge of his chosen path and his past takes him through many exotic lands and brutal wars. He is also present in the King Arthur trilogy by M.K. Hume which preceded the Prophecy trilogy.
• Mark Twain made Merlin the villain in his 1889 novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. He is presented as a complete charlatan with no real magic power, and the character seems to stand for (and to satirise) superstition, yet at the very last chapter of the book Merlin suddenly seems to have a real magic power and he puts the protagonist into a centuries-long sleep (as Merlin himself was put to sleep in the original Arthurian canon).
• J.K. Rowling portrays Merlin as a famous or almost God-like wizard in her Harry Potter series, and is referred to as "The Prince of Enchanters". The expression "Merlin's Beard" is used by the magical population as a substitute for "My God." Also featured is "The Order of Merlin", which is mentioned throughout the books. It is given to witches and wizards for great accomplishments, and is given in three classes, First, Second, and Third. It is similar to an OBE. He is also featured on a Famous Witches and Wizards Collectors card, which are included with chocolate frogs. Albus Dumbledore also much resembles him. As in many other stories, he is the enemy of Morgan le Fay.
• C. S. Lewis used the figure of Merlin Ambrosius in his 1946 novel That Hideous Strength, the third book in the Space Trilogy. In it, Merlin has supposedly lain asleep for centuries to be awakened for the battle against the materialistic agents of the devil, able to consort with the angelic powers because he came from a time when sorcery was not yet a corrupt art. Lewis's character of Ransom has apparently inherited the title of Pendragon from the Arthurian tradition. Merlin also mentions "Numinor," a nod to J. R. R. Tolkien's Númenor.
• The Galician author Álvaro Cunqueiro published Merlín y familia in 1957. In it, Merlin dwells in the Galician forest of Esmelle and is visited by mythical figures seeking magical advice. It synthesizes Arthurian legend and Galician folktales.
• Robert Weinberg in this books A Logical Magician (also published as A Modern Magician) 1994, and its sequel A Calculated Magic 1996 portrays Merlin as an being brought into existence through belief and possessed of all the powers general belief grants him. Its the 90s and Merlin has to recruit a hero to save the world using logical devices (electronics) to defeat the chaotic forces of evil.
• T.H. White's 1958 Arthurian retelling, The Once and Future King, in which "Merlyn", as White calls him, has the curious affliction of living backwards in time to everyone else. This affliction also appears in Dan Simmons' Hyperion as the "Merlin sickness."
• Mary Stewart's Merlin Trilogy. "Myrddin Emrys" (Merlin Ambrosius) is the protagonist of the first two novels, The Crystal Cave (1970) and The Hollow Hills (1973), which are based on earlier traditions of the character, as shown above. The last book of the trilogy, The Last Enchantment, and a related book, The Wicked Day, focus more on Arthur and Mordred, though the former is still told from his viewpoint. Stewart portrays Aurelius Ambrosius (brother to Uther Pendragon) as his father, and thus makes him Arthur's cousin. Here Merlin goes mad due to Morgause's poison.
• Marion Zimmer Bradley's 1979 The Mists of Avalon retells the Arthurian legend with Morgan Le Fay as protagonist, in the tradition of John Gardner's Grendel. It includes two distinct characters who, in succession, hold the title of "The Merlin of Britain," an office which grants leadership of the Druids in the same way that "The Lady of the Lake" is the title of the high priestess of Avalon. The division of the Merlin character of the Arthurian canon into two different persons enables Bradley to have in the early part of the story an elderly, fatherly Merlin to be Arthur's mentor, and in the later part – a younger Merlin with whom Nimue could fall tragically in love. This usage ("the Merlin") has found its way into a fair amount of subsequent Arthurian fiction.
• Arthurian scholar Nikolai Tolstoy (a relation of Leo Tolstoy) wrote a non-fiction book, The Quest For Merlin (1985), and a historical fantasy, The Coming of the King (1988), the first of an unfinished trilogy. The latter book's depiction of Merlin may be the most historically accurate of all, since he lives after Arthur's death. The hero Beowulf even appears as an invader.
• Merlin (1988) and Pendragon (1994), the second and fourth book of Stephen Lawhead's Pendragon Cycle, are narrated by Merlin (Myrddin) and seen through his viewpoint. Lawhead makes him a half-Atlantean king of Dyfed who goes insane, but recovers after years of living in the forests; he then assumes the roles of prophet, adviser and bard.
• T.A. Barron portrays Merlin as a young man in his The Lost Years of Merlin series, and as an adult in its sequel series, The Great Tree of Avalon. Merlin also figures prominently in Barron's Merlin Effect, which may be in the same fictional continuity.
• René Barjavel's L'Enchanteur.
• Michel Rio's "Merlin."
• Merlin, by Robert Nye, (1978, Hamish Hamilton, ISBN 0-241-89952-4) is a bawdy, anti-Christian version of the Arthurian story, as relived by Merlin after Nimue has trapped him.
• William Rowley's The Birth of Merlin (play, 1622)
• Merlin was a Broadway musical in 1983 featuring illusionist Doug Henning and music by Elmer Bernstein.
• Merlin is one of the main characters in the Magic Tree House series of children's books by Mary Pope Osborne. He appears in the later volumes of the series, known as the Merlin Missions.
• Merlin is a Druid who rules over Avalon in Bernard Cornwell's The Warlord Chronicles. He is portrayed as an irreverent, lecherous, sarcastic and condescending mystic, revered and feared by both Britons and Saxons, who is obsessed with bringing back the old gods of Britain, so they can make the Isles their sacred realm again, expelling from it Christians, Saxons and all those who do not belong to the old way.
• Fred Saberhagen's novel Merlin's Bones is told partly from the perspective of a young Merlin.
• In Diana Wynne Jones's book The Merlin Conspiracy, Merlin is not one person, but a title. The Merlin is entrusted with the kingdom's magical health.
• Merlin, called Aurelianus, is a character in Tim Powers's 1979 novel "The Drawing of the Dark" which describes the reincarnation of King Arthur, an Irishman named Brian Duffy, leading the forces of the West in battle against the forces of the East in 16th century Vienna.
• Merlin is the name of a young magician prince in Roger Zelazny's present-day fantasy novel series The Chronicles of Amber, who takes over as hero of this story after Merlin's father Corwin goes missing. Amber in these books is a medieval-type city and world that legends come from, magically, so this may be (within these books) the "real story" that the Merlin legend is based on, even though this story mostly isn't very similar and this Merlin already knows the legend. Or he may be a descendant, although Zelazny doesn't say so. Or Merlin's mother just liked the name. He gets trapped in a crystal cave, anyway.
• Merlin is the main character in Robert Holdstock's Merlin's Codex trilogy of mythic fiction novels which traces Merlin's adventures in Europe over a span of two millennia. Merlin is also a major character in Holdstock's novel Merlin's Wood.
• Stephen R. Lawhead writes an account of Merlin in his fantasy series, The Pendragon Cycle (Merlin is Book Two of the five-book series).
• Stephen King mentions a character called Maerlyn in The Dark Tower series of novels, as well as the prequel comic The Gunslinger Born. Although this Maerlyn is an adviser to an alternative Earth's version of King Arthur, he appears to be evil, as he sires the evil sorcerer Marten Broadcloak and creates the soul-corrupting Wizard's Rainbow.
• Simon Green's Nightside series contains a character named Merlin Satanspawn, who is the son of the Devil and who was King Arthur's mentor and friend.
• Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising series has Merlin as the central character in an Arthurian fantasy series about the battle between "the Dark and the Light". The child characters know him as "Gummerry" (contraction of Great Uncle Merry). He is also variously known as Professor Merriman Lyon, Merry Lyon, Mer-lion and Merlin.
• Merlin also appears as the antagonist in James A Owen's The Indigo King in the Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica series. In the book, Owen discusses the development of Merlin into the Cartographer of the Imaginarium Geographica.
• Cyr Myrddin, the Coming of Age of Merlin by Michael de Angelo is the story of the early life of Merlin as he searches for his destiny. Gododdin Publishing 2009
• Sherrilyn Kenyon (writing under the name of Kinley MacGregor) includes a "Penmerlin Emrys" of Arthurian legend in her Lords of Avalon series.
• Robert Nye published a Merlin book in 1978. Though dedicated to Malory it draws rather from the earlier texts, curiously intertwining references to Kaballah and explicit erotic passages.
• In The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher the Merlin is the title of the leader of the White Council. It is strongly implied that the reason for this is that the Council was founded by the legendary Merlin himself and also stated that Amoracchius, the sword used by Knight of the Cross Michael Carpenter, was once trusted to the original Merlin to be given to a Knight he found worthy which further implies that Amoracchius is in fact Excalibur.
• There are books based on British TV show Merlin (2008), featuring an adolescent Merlin in King Uther's Camelot, including television episode stories.