Well, that was definitely an ending... and kind of a beginning, I suppose. It's a cycle, after all. I think that's at least part of the point of The Third Magic. The cycle goes on and interrupting it in hopes of a continuation doesn't really have the best consequences for those involved. And then it goes and does that thing where we hit the reset button to basically undo everything... I mean, I choose to read it as an alternate timeline where Merlin didn't do "The Second Magic," but I gather from the other reviews I've read, I'm the only one.
The Third Magic features a pretty complete retelling of the Arthurian legend interspersed with the continuation of Arthur Blessing's story and Taliesin's education, apparently. It does contradict re-tellings and even events from the earlier books (mostly The Broken Sword); however, it's basically a retcon and doesn't actually affect the story that much. In fact, given that I personally disliked The Broken Sword and the retcons, one could probably just skip it. Everything's re-explained in a satisfactory enough manner, I think. There's also a complete swap of Morgan for Morgause in The Third Magic that just had me tilting my head every time she appeared. I kind of understand why, but at the same time I'm just like... those are two different people in Arthurian Legend and you've apparently decided to combine them and give them the lesser known one's name... because Orkney needed to be involved. Anyway, I digress.
Again in this trilogy, I wasn't super impressed with the "villain" of the piece. I think there probably should have just been focus on Arthur and his crisis of person-hood rather than throwing in Titus and Pinto, but apparently someone had to help restart the cycle so... "villains." However, Titus was at least more interesting than Aubrey and (view spoiler) so I'll forgive him being around. Pinto... Titus just needed someone to take care of him apparently. He didn't really do much other than cause a little chaos so... yeah.
My issue with the knights was still here. I understand they're from medieval times and it's fun to have them causing chaos because apparently medieval courts were just super rowdy all the time... but I'm still not convinced they would have been as annoyingly inept as they're portrayed. *shrug* Another just me thing, probably.
There's also a large focus on the whole Launcelot/Guenevere thing that annoys me every time I read it, whether it's supposedly true or else just rumors. I've never enjoyed this part of the story and revisiting it this time actually reminded me a lot of The Mists of Avalon so that's not great. I get it, it's the melodrama of it all, but that was actually something I liked about The Forever King and The Broken Sword. Mention it. Mention how it was basically the start of Arthur's downfall and move on. But no, gotta linger on it... a lot. *Insert rolling eyes here*
Anyway... overall The Third Magic was alright. I read it in basically three days, so it definitely had my attention and did clip along at a good pace. The ending wasn't exactly the best, but, like I said at the beginning of this review, gotta do the cycle thing. I completely understand why a bunch of people didn't think it was satisfying. Heck, I personally think this trilogy went through highs and lows and this one just happened to do both in one book. I just tend to talk about stuff that annoyed me because I don't want to spoil things for others.
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