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A review by aggressive_nostalgia
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain
Honestly, not sure what to make of this. I got it as a present for my 14th birthday and am just now finishing it almost three years later. The plot can be extremely confusing, and lags somewhat in places, but has some really interesting parts as well. I like how Hank is forever going on and on about the evils of slavery and poverty and how he keeps trying to convince the people of the superiority of "modern" society - and nobody gets it. The king is hilarious when he's trying to pass himself off as a peasant.
(*be warned - the rest of this review is a profusion of spoilers.*)
The plot is rather slow-moving until the end, at which point the reader is suddenly left saying, "Wait. What just happened?" One minute Hank's converted everything to electricity and has succeeded in eliminating the caste system - and then the king discovers the fling between Guenever and Launcelot and with one big explosion, it's back to oil lamps, rusty armor, slavery, bad haircuts - and in the space of two pages, thirty thousand men are dead, including the entire Round Table, Guenever, and Arthur. Then the main character apparently dies. Then he's not dead, and then he really is dead in the last sentence. It was utterly nonsensical, yet gripping all the same. Somehow, a pretty decent book. The whole thing was generally weird and probably not something I'll read more than say, twice (not counting all the rereading I had to do to get through it the first time). But I've probably rambled long enough and told you next to nothing but the important parts of the book, so I'll shut up now.
(*be warned - the rest of this review is a profusion of spoilers.*)
The plot is rather slow-moving until the end, at which point the reader is suddenly left saying, "Wait. What just happened?" One minute Hank's converted everything to electricity and has succeeded in eliminating the caste system - and then the king discovers the fling between Guenever and Launcelot and with one big explosion, it's back to oil lamps, rusty armor, slavery, bad haircuts - and in the space of two pages, thirty thousand men are dead, including the entire Round Table, Guenever, and Arthur. Then the main character apparently dies. Then he's not dead, and then he really is dead in the last sentence. It was utterly nonsensical, yet gripping all the same. Somehow, a pretty decent book. The whole thing was generally weird and probably not something I'll read more than say, twice (not counting all the rereading I had to do to get through it the first time). But I've probably rambled long enough and told you next to nothing but the important parts of the book, so I'll shut up now.