The Hollow Hills
core novel 1973 The Merlin Trilogy
Record
| First published | 1973 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 4.25 (23,358 ratings, collected 2026-09-21) |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780340172759 |
| Internal chronology | 2 |
Synopsis
Born on Christmas Eve, Arthur Pendragon is the illegitimate son of the married duchess Ygraine and Uther Pendragon, a union Merlin himself arranged. But the child is not welcomed by everyone: his father demands he be hidden until a legitimate son can be born, and Merlin gives the baby to his own childhood nurse for safekeeping and goes into hiding, later keeping watch over the boy as he grows up in the household of Count Ector of Galava. In a dream Merlin learns of a sword of extraordinary craftsmanship, the sword of the Emperor Maximus, their common ancestor, hidden in a long-deserted Roman temple; he retrieves it and hides it on an island in the middle of a lake. When Uther is killed in battle and Arthur's right to the kingship is challenged, the young man must claim the sword, Caliburn, to prove his birthright as High King of Britain.
Where it sits
- Universe: The Merlin Trilogy
- Series: The Merlin Trilogy core; position 2 of 4 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Mary Stewart
Notes
- From the series record (The Merlin Trilogy): Widely known by the title "trilogy" for its first three, Merlin-narrated novels (The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, The Last Enchantment); The Wicked Day is a fourth novel in the same continuity, retelling the same events from Mordred's point of view, and is registered here as Core Canon alongside the original three rather than left out, since it completes the same single continuous story. A later, more loosely connected novel, The Prince and the Pilgrim (1995), is set in the same world but is not part of Merlin's own narrative and is left out of this admission.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings, but they resolve to the exact same sequence for this book, so one combined line is shown instead of two identical ones.
- Reading order, within the series The Merlin Trilogy: position 2 of 4: previous The Crystal Cave (1970) · next The Last Enchantment (1979)
Sources
- Wikipedia: Mary Stewart's Merlin Trilogy
- Wikipedia: The Crystal Cave
- Wikipedia: The Last Enchantment
- Wikipedia: The Hollow Hills
- Hodder & Stoughton (publisher description, via Angus & Robertson)
- Washoe County Library catalogue (Eos edition description)
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