Point of View

Mary Stewart's The Crystal Cave is told in both first person and third person point of view. It is the life of Merlin from when he was a child until King Arthur was conceived. It is a masterful process of mixing the character Merlin's personal first hand memories with his great story telling abilities.

It is a first hand account, which Merlin delivers with the impact of having been there. The author does a good job with this. In some places in the stories, where Merlin wasn't there he uses the third person point of view. A good example of the third person point of view is in Book Four, Chapter One, The Red Dragon. In Chapter One Merlin tells of Ambrosius's exploits as from a story.

Merlin seems to use the third person perspective when there is a lot of history. The first person view...