SOURCE: "Wizard Briton," in Book World, August 16, 1970, p. 2.

In the following review, Blackburn presents a brief outline of the plot of The Crystal Cave and praises the book as a "colorful romance."

Fifth-century Britain is the setting of Miss Stewart's new novel [The Crystal Cave], and its hero is the magical Merlin, seen here from his youth as a court bastard in Wales through the far-flung adventures that lead to his hand in the birth of King Arthur, whose destiny he is to guide as he rules Britain. It is as the author notes, not a work of scholarship, but "a work of the imagination," and its hero offers Miss Stewart fine opportunity for building the kind of colorful romance that has made her books so widely read in this country.

In Miss Stewart's version, Merlin is a solitary but game little boy whose Sight is kept secret...