The Quest of the Fair Unknown, by Gerald Morris

Summary: When Beaufils sets out to find his father, a knight of Camelot, he has no idea what to expect, having spent his entire life in the forest with his mother. Along the way he meets many interesting people and has a variety of adventures.

Thoughts: When I first started the book and saw that there was likely to be an awful lot of culture-shock, I figured I wouldn't like the book because such things tend to get on my nerves (ever see the movie Elf? Much of that movie annoyed me alot because they seemed to be playing up the "dude does stupid stuff because he doesn't know any better" aspect, which is kinda sad, because what little I remember of the actual plot suggests that if they had cut most of that it would've been a good movie. Even if it would have been about 2/3 shorter... But I digress). But the culture-shock was mostly Beaufils not knowing what life was like and asking questions most people wouldn't and being determined to think the best of people no matter how horribly they might act. Maybe the Middle Ages had a higher tolearance for unusual people.

Then I read further and saw that it was Arthurian legend of some kind, and wasn't sure I was interested. I guess I'd rather read about times I know something about, yano?

But I ignored both those issues and continued reading (basically because a book has to be /really/ horrible for me to actually put it down. I think the only book I've started recently and not finished is the Bible (or more correctly, the newest one I've gotten. Not that I've finished any of the others I have), and that has more to do with having way too many library books to read to bother with a book I own than my not wanting to read it. That, and the fact that it's incredibly thick, but more that books I own tend to get put off until I've finished all my library books (which is usually never. The only time I remember that happening recently I managed to get thru all the books I'd gotten for Christmas that year before getting more. How did I get so off-topic? *looks over paragraph* I think I should start a new paragraph to finish this particular thought))

In the end, I ended up enjoying it. It's got this lovely message about everyone having their own quest and some people have no idea what theirs is, but they manage anyway. I'm not sure it can be elaborated into our here and now considering that there was a sorcerer type guy who was helping to point people in the proper direction and there were several different worlds that they traveled between at various time. But still, everyone has some quest in life.