Merlin's Ring

Merlin's Godson #3

by H. Warner Munn

King of the World's Edge ('39, '66)
The Ship from Atlantis ('67)
Merlin's Ring ('74)

The first two novels were issued together as Merlin's Godson in '76.

A projected 4th volume to be named The Sword of Merlin was uncompleted.

The novel, continuing The Ship from Atlantis, tells of Prince Gwalchmai's star-crossed love for Princess Corenice of Atlantis in her various reincarnations, along with his centuries-delayed quest to secure aid & settlers to shore up the faltering empire established by his father & refugees from the fallen kingdom of Arthur in the New World. The tale opens with Gwalchmai's reawakening after centuries in suspended animation. The Britain he reaches is a prostrated land transformed into England by its Saxon conquerors, with his father's exile forgotten & his countrymen incapable of undertaking any sort of colonization project.

Guided by his reincarnated lover, he seeks aid unsuccessfully, his travels taking him from Viking-age Europe to China & Japan, & back to early Renaissance Europe. He's abetted by the magical ring of his godfather Merlin, responsible for his longevity, & by Corenice. Highlights include the hero's visit to Faerie, his service as a companion to Joan of Arc & his revelation in Iceland of the secret of the New World to a Genoan, merchant, Columbus.

Genres: Fantasy, Arthurian, Fiction, Historical, Speculative Fiction, Historical Fiction, Historical Fantasy

377 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1974

Reviews

[Terry · Rating 4 out of 5]

H. Warner Munn’s _Merlin’s Ring_ is one of the odder fantasies I have come across in my reading, but also one for which I have a deep affection. The book is equal parts pseudo-Arthurian Romance (in both the medieval and modern sense of the word), era-spanning historical fantasy à la Phra the Phoenician, and epic hero’s journey; there is even some mild pulp sci-fi thrown in for good measure. Despite (or maybe because of) all of this melding and mixing, _Merlin’s Ring_ manages to be something all its own.

Written by one of the old standbys of the Weird Tales pulp magazine (Munn was an associate of Lovecraft and Seabury Quinn) _Merlin’s Ring_ was probably Munn’s masterwork. It is actually the second volume in a series of stories that purport to tell the tale of what happened to Arthur’s followers after the great King’s fall, but it can be read on its own quite easily. All one needs to know from the first volume (collecting two original novellas under the title Merlin's Godson) is that it describes how the wizard Merlin and the Romano-British centurion Ventidius Varro fled Britain with their followers and sailed in Arthur’s ship Prydwen to the New World. There they became kings among the Aztecs and a son is born to Varro, Gwalchmai, who has for godfather none other than the famous Merlin. Varro sends his son back to the Old World on a quest to find the current emperor and offer to him overlordship of Varro’s new domain. On the way across the Atlantic Gwalchmai has many adventures and even comes across an ancient Atlantean Swan-Ship which houses a strange robotic statue inhabited by the transmigrating spirit of an undying Atlantean princess. The two of course fall in love, but as the tale ends Gwalchmai is trapped beneath a glacier with his love, Corenice, promising they will meet again.

This volume opens several hundred years later as Corenice, now inhabiting the body of a Viking maiden, forces her family to steer their ship towards the glacier that houses Gwalchmai’s body. Thanks to having drunk his godfather’s elixir of life, as well as having possession of his magical ring, Gwalchmai has been able to weather the centuries in the ice unharmed and no older than when he was first frozen. He is freed from the ice by Corenice and so begins his renewed quest to find the emperor to whom he can give the message of his father. What follows is a meandering journey from western Europe to the far East and back again which spans centuries (Merlin’s elixir exacts periods of a death-like sleep in order to pay for long life) and takes Gwalchmai into a variety of adventures. These adventures include a somewhat admittedly twee stay in Faery where he retrieves Arthur’s sword Excalibur, a journey to China (initially in search of the supposed Christian King Prester John) in a humourous style reminiscent of Bramah’s Kai Lung stories, a voyage to feudal Japan, and a return west where he comes across Joan of Arc (an apparent descendant of his and Corenice’s) and ultimately tangles with an old foe, the alien-god Oduarpa who had been responsible for the fall of Atlantis.

In many ways it is a strange tale and not every element of it works as well as others. Still, Munn has an easy prose style and was a meticulous researcher who brings vivid life to the era-spanning adventures of his hero. Gwalchmai’s ostensible quest is really little more than a macguffin meant to propel the hero forward through time and across space as he lives out his not-quite-immortal term. The lynchpin of the story is the romance between Gwalchmai and his transmigrating love Corenice. Sometimes this romance can be stretched to the point of excess, but ultimately Munn is able to pull the story back and make us care about these characters whose fate as semi-supernatural heroes seems to always get in the way of their true desire to simply live a simple life with each other. Munn creates an interesting world populated both with real historical figures (among them Kublai Khan, Joan of Arc, Gilles de Rais and Christopher Columbus), alongside mythical figures such as King Arthur, the Norse god Thor, and the Fae, as well as his own inventions in the form of Corenice, last daughter of high-tech Atlantis, and their alien foe the dark lord Oduarpa.

I imagine this book will not be to everyone’s taste, but if you like historically flavoured fantasy with a strong dose of romance and optimism then I’d recommend giving _Merlin’s Ring_ a try (either with or without the companion volume Merlin's Godson).

[Pam Baddeley · Rating 2 out of 5]

I started the present volume in the belief that it came before "Merlin's Godson" because the copyright date of this was 1974 and the latter was published in 1976. It soon transpired that this was a sequel and, on investigation, "Merlin's Godson" was a compilation of two earlier stories in the series. Presumably it was reprinted to make those available again as they had been published around the 1940s or so. So I put this aside to read that one first, though it was unfortunate that the first part of this is a big spoiler for the events of 'The Ship from Atlantis' which forms part two of "Merlin's Godson".

Although this sequel was written in the 1970s, the author's old school style is preserved including the unfortunate tendency to constantly head-hop and comment on things that the characters themselves do not know, especially as the action of this story occurs over several centuries. I found the style very "dry" and wasn't sure I would finish it, but I finally did.

The story follows on from 'The Ship from Atlantis". Gwalcmai, son of the ex-Roman legionnaire who became 'king' in the pre-Columbian New World, and the local woman he married, has been trapped in a glacier for about two centuries. During that time his love, Corenice, the Atlantean woman who has the knack of sending her spirit into other living things, has been hanging around as various creatures hoping that a human being would arrive just in time to prevent him being lost as the glacier melts and bits drop off into the sea. She manages to possess a Viking girl Thyra, so the girl's father and rather unpleasant betrothed, plus the much nicer Irish slave, do come to his rescue, and they live for a while with a pacifist community nearby, but soon the psychopathic betrothed is plotting to do away with the other men to possess Thyra himself.

Eventually, Gwalchmai, Thyra/Corenice and the slave who loves Thyra set out on Gwalchmai's long-interrupted mission to Rome (in 'The Ship from Atlantis' he set off to bring word of the Americas to the Emperor of Rome and offer the New World as a refuge for the people of Rome, beset by the barbarians), but it is soon interrupted when he receives a communication from the ring he wears, which is an heirloom from his godfather, Merlin. This tells him to go off to a spae-wife (someone who sees visions) and he will be told what to do. And so commences the long winded and torturous journey, performing one quest after another and sometimes spending a century or two in suspended animation while Corenice has to inhabit other bodies and hang around. Various supernatural beings are encountered along the way including fairies, the god Thor, Corenice's sea-goddess, and a dark and hostile being which was mentioned in the earlier volume as having descended from another planet.

Everything bar the kitchen sink is thrown in, including the court of the Mongol Khan, medieval Japan (and why should being knocked on the head cause Gwalchmai to lose a whole lifetime with the reincarnated Corenice?), King Arthur (where I found it hard to believe that Merlin had created an elaborate mausoleum complete with magical paintings in the time that Arthur's followers were hanging around at the bottom of the hill in 'The King of the World's Edge', part one of "Merlin's Godson") and Joan of Arc. It transpires that Gwalchmai and Corenice, while she inhabited a body with no spirit of its own, had a son who was born after Gwalchmai went off on his ill conceived journey to Rome, and they are therefore the ancestors of Joan.

One jarring note occurred a couple of times where Gwalchmai has the urge to use violence to put Corenice in her place. As I wasn't able to write this review until some days after finishing the book and the details have blurred, I can only recall the first incident: Corenice is playing along with a woman they meet who sympathises with her for her husband's lack of consideration for her pregnancy. Gwalchmail wants to hit Corenice and is actually looking around for a willow to cut a switch. Considering that he supposedly has a centuries-long devotion to her this was hard to fathom.

The book drags in places. The best feature is the cover: the flying swan ships of Atlantis do make a cameo appearance in an unexplained time travel sequence. Although it was clear in 'The Ship from Atlantis' that these vessels are of a gold coloured metal, the image of a fire-breathing mute swan is striking. For this and the occasional historical interest I am awarding this volume 2 stars.

[Jackie · Rating 3 out of 5]

While the premise of Merlin's Ring is intriguing, I had to force myself to put the time in to finish it. Not because it's good, but because I want to get it over with. The story is good but the author ruins the momentum with uber-wordy paragraphs that don't have anything to do with the story, or just marginally.
This book could have benefitted by a good editor as the idea was fantastic yet the execution was awful. In the end, it was very predictable. I had planned on reading the sequel right away but now that's going on the back-burner as I wasn't all that impressed with Merlin's Ring.

[Patrick Stuart · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating and very odd book. The cultural tone feels incredibly strange with a moral paradigm stretching from the 1930s (glorious Anglo Hegemony and European rule ahoy) to the 1970s (mystic dreamworld and insect best friends) which makes sense if you consider how old as heck Munn was when writing this.

[Sheila · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had a bit of a time getting through the vernacular in this book. Very interesting story line, great characters, a great 'new' (not very new...the book was written in '74, I think) Merlin tale; just too much wordiness.

[Douglas Milewski · Rating 3 out of 5]

Merlin's Ring (1974) by H. Warner Munn is among the last fantasies of the pre-Tolkien style. Drawing from the Western and Arthurian corpus, the story is of Merlin's Godson, Gwalchmai, and his beloved Atlantean warrior maiden, Corenice. The mission is simple: reach the Emperor of the Roman Empire to add a faraway land to his kingdom. The problem: Rome fell five hundred years ago.

I found this a book that one must intend to read. It's not like an exciting modern novel that whisks you away. Instead, one must walk in and accept the author's story style and pacing. The story itself would be considered bad by many modern measures, as Munn stomps on many modern taboos. In some ways, he shows you why the taboos are taboo, but in other ways, he shows that the taboos are nonsense. Much of his success depends on how well he told any particular piece of the story, with the unevenness being the determinant on whether it worked or not.

The story is broad, as an historical epic is broad, taking place over centuries, giving the reader a witness to historical times. Munn does his work, because history matters here, not the fantasy history that we've grown used to, but history informed by scholarship. While I can't say that the history is perfect, he takes it as close as the scholarship of the time can bring him.

The tale itself consists of many arcs arcros many times, giving it the feel of multiple novellas rather than one, large novel.

I felt quite charmed with the relationship between Gwalchmail and Corenice. They do not have intercourse before marriage, and then strive to keep faithful to each other despite the arc of time moving between them. He is extremely long lived due to magic, and she flits between bodies, sometimes in control, and sometimes not. What catches me most is the earnestness of this faithfulness, that neither is trying to wiggle out or create moral escape clauses. When they said faithful, they meant faithful.

I found the ending rather lackluster. How does one end a book quite like this? That's always a problem. Good ending are hard, and hard for this book because Munn never quite got the book leading up to something specific. The end comes because, in the end, there must be an end.

I recommend this book because it reads so differently than a modern fantasy. It represents a path that fantasy once followed, a path that's been forgotten but for a handful of old books. The hero is no hyper-macho. The heroine is not hyper-competent. Both are quite earnest, without cynicism or witty banter. They are who they are.

[Fraser Sherman · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 because the underlying assumption that Europe colonizing the New World is a good thing is never even questioned. That aside, this is awesome, filled with a mix of Christianity and paganism, history and fantasy (the immortal Gwalchmai meets Joan of Arc and also visits Faerie) and crossing much of Europe and Asia over its 600 year span. What ties it together and keeps it from becoming just random incidents is Gwalchmai's love for Corenice, which is the real dramatic arc of the story: it stars with her freeing him from a glacier (at the end of Merlin's Godson, the preceding book) and ends with them finally together for all time.

[J.W. Wright · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gwalchmai, son of Roman centurion Ventidius Varro, who has been tasked with journeying to the Old World and informing its emperor about the newly discovered continent that his father and his late godfather, Merlin the Mage have discovered, has become trapped beneath a glacier for hundreds of years, and is discovered and set free by his twin flame, once known as Corenice, who has now been reincarnated into the body of a Viking maiden. So begins an epic journey that spans hundreds of years…..

This final volume in H. Warner Munn’s “Merlin Trilogy” is what was considered to be the magnum opus of former Weird Tales author H.Warner Munn. Munn published the first book in the trilogy, “The King of the World’s Edge” back in the ’30s, and the second one, “The Ship From Atlantis” in the latter 1960s. With the creation of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy line of books in the ’70s, this final volume of that trilogy came into print in 1974, so this was pretty much considered Munn’s life’s work.
The story told therein is epic, moving, and momentous, but is not without its flaws. It follows the seemingly immortal Gwalchmai throughout many centuries of time as he continues his quest through the Old World to inform the current-reigning emperor about the New World which is meant to become a haven for the peoples ruled by King Arthur, who now are long gone and only their numerous ancestors remain. Gwalchmai is like the Highlander Duncan McLeod in that, because of a life potion he drank of his godfather, Merlin’s, he is doomed to live out several centuries of immortality. He must watch his twin flame Corenice, in whatever body she is currently reincarnated into, die of either old age or untimely tragedy, until he finds her again reincarnated decades later.

Gwalchmai’s far-flung quest leads him from Europe to the realm of Faery, to the far East, to China, to Japan, and back again. He comes into possession of such magical sacred weapons as King Arthur’s sword Excalibur and the knight Roland’s enchanted blade, Durendal. He does battle with gods, demons, monsters, and men. He participates in the Crusades, in the war between China and Japan, witnesses the elves transmigrate from Earth, and even fights alongside Joan of Arc.

And while all these adventures are intriguing, I was personally disappointed at the lack of battle scenes and blood and thunder action that was present in the first two volumes of this trilogy. This volume is more of a love story/romance between Gwalchmai and his eternal love Corenice, and as much as I can appreciate that, and the centuries-spanning story that it encompasses, the lack of battle and action scenes let me down quite a bit. Nevertheless, I did feel attached to the characters of Gwalchmai and Corenice, and did enjoy their story.

I give “Merlin’s Ring” by H. Warner Munn a 3.5 out of 5.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is followed by Merlin's Godson chronologically, I think. There might be another book or two in this, but this was the best of the 2 I read. The pace was uneven, but the story was very interesting & rather weird. A love story that spans centuries, mostly in Europe, with very limited magic.

[Ada Haynes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Took me 20 years to read that book, that I bought in a second-hand bookstore long ago.
It was written in 1974 and you feel that when you read it. As a few reviewers wrote below, the 1st half is okayish, even in an olf fashioned fantasy waym but the second half... jumping from one main historical event to another, just by accident.
Mmmh.
I finished it, but I'm not going to look for the 1st book.

[Jacob · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unfortunately a bit of a dud. The books fails to live up to its ambition because the strands of meaningful story telling are too disparate, and the thing you last found interesting and engaging is long forgotten by the time the next thing perks up your interest.

[Bradley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating and very detailed. Fair read. =)

[Hannah Mccurdy-Adams · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not my favourite style of writing. Fairly dry in sections

[James]

An epic fantasy, centering on the heroic deeds of a young Roman-British prince and his love for an Atlantean sorceress

[Cheryl · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm not quite sure what to think about this book. I really enjoyed the first half of the book, but totally lost interest about half way thru. I struggled thru the rest over the course of a week and was glad to have read to the end that wrapped things up.

[James Oden · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I first read the forward at the beginning of the book which extolled the virtues of Merlin's Ring and H. Warner Munn's writing, I was frankly dubious. Still I had bought the book in a used book store and thought in the least it should be a fun read.

What I discovered was that it is a lovely book and in way I have trouble articulating. I certainly enjoyed the way the story crossed time and landed the character Gwalchmai in various historical settings. In each of these setting the culture is explored and reference in many cases was given to other writings. That was then another element I truly enjoyed, which was the other literary references. When the sword of Roland was sought, I could relate as I had read "The Song of Roland". But even this was only a surface thing. At the end of the day I found that I loved Munn's writing, like I love being in the presence of a good friend; it just struck home in a very deep way.

[S. L. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This has all the beauties (or you might call them flaws) of a fantasy from Andre Norton's era. The characters are straightforward, instinctively doing the right thing - no neuroses or self- doubting. History is a joy to travel through, the future hopeful; technology and magic go hand in hand and are usually benevolent. It's straightforward and charming as Elveron, Munn's land of the fairies. The quest has little meaning to jaded moderns, but the love story between a wandering soul and an immortal swordsman never grows stale.

[Renee Wolcott · Rating 1 out of 5]

Truly awful fantasy about lovers who magically transcend time. Laughably bad.

[Abby · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not very good, and not even in the entertaining way I thought it wouldn't be good. Just kind of dull, with uninteresting characters, prose, and plot.

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whew! I sure don't remember this one, but note that it's listed as read in the bibliographical file. Must have been one of those one-nighters read during a break from school.

[Ian Slater · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very tangential fantasy novel