The Return of Merlin

By: Deepak Chopra

Narrated by: Simon Jones

Length: 3 hrs and 4 mins

Publisher's summary

Holistic health guru Chopra makes his fictional debut with a symbolic tale mixing Arthurian legends with a modern-day detective story.

©2008 Deepak Chopra (P)2008 Random House Audio

ABRIDGED

I was disappointed that this did not follow the text. The previous reviews remark this is choppy and poorly developed, it is because it is not the original text/story. Should be marked as ABRIDGED!

Not the full book 😕

I recently was gifted this book and I was excited when I saw it on here but it does not follow the book…. Huge sections are gone. Very disappointed in this because I wanted to follow along and this is impossible. Sadness

Black and White

I read this book over 20yrs ago after my mother past away. It was the second book following The Way of the Wizard which I also recommend!!! They both helped me thru a dark time in my life and since the Bible was to difficult for me to understand at that time I started searching self help books at Hastings book store. I found the way of the wizard and since I have always liked wizardry I really enjoyed that book. It helped me to overcome the struggle I was having trying to understand my life. By the way I was only 20 then. When I finished that book I looked into more Deepak Chopra titles and bought 3 or 4 but these two are my favorites. They both give a good illustration of good verses evil and overcoming the darkness. It’s a fact of life that we all must fight this fight. I now read the Bible but must say that these books helped open me up to doing that. I recommend this book to anyone who feels the weight of this world on their shoulders and want something better or understanding of who they are. You are gonna side with somebody as you read and I hope you are fighting the good fight!!! Peace

Choppy, Confusing, and Minimally Developed

I suggest skipping the introduction until the end so that you can listen to the story without preconceived ideas and allow yourself to make your own interpretations of events. The story starts out fine but as it progresses, the plot becomes confusing, in part due to the time-shifting element. Also, in order to prevent the reader from guessing the entire plot, at one point the author uses some minor misdirection. Unfortunately, to accomplish this, a character acts in a way that is not really consistent with the rest of how the character has been “developed”. In general, the characters in the story are mostly flat and rather than learning or growing, any changes they undergo are sudden or simply induced by a touch or other artificial means that replaces character evolution. The author also relies heavily on the reader being already familiar with the essence of the characters from Arthurian lore. I also had the feeling of the author taking someone else's characters and using them clumsily as puppets for his own quick puppet show akin to a child’s performance. By the end, I had lost any connection that might have been established with the plot or characters. I was also confused by events occurring an then reversing. Simon Jones does a great job of narrating, but even he cannot save the story. Also, for some reason, the author himself speaks the chapter titles which breaks the flow of Jones’ voice.