Lots of used mass-market paperback editions on Amazon for a penny, so only $4 with shipping.
I second the endorsement of Firelord. Hard to find, but an excellent book.
The Warlord Chronicles by Bernard Cornwell. They’re the Arthurian story told as if it was historical fiction in 6th century Wales.
Very well done- it’s the familiar story, but with a really interesting spin on it, and well researched history and culture about the actual time and setting.
So you may be a bit confused by references to what must sound like two completely different cycles: one from Dark Age Wales, the other from England in the High Middle Ages.
The latter is where most of the mainstream literature has its origins. The former is grounded in attempts to recover the stories in their original form.
Tell us a bit more about what you liked about Merlin, so we can narrow down the recommendations a bit.
I second Sword at Sunset by Rosemary Sutcliffe. Excellent novel.
I’ll chip in with “The Forever King”
Sutcliff did another seriesof Arthurian novels in the more familiar High Middle ages style as well. I much prefer her first attempt - Sword at Sunset is great.
Cornwell takes a similar setting as Sutcliff but amps everything up a bit, it’s my favourite Arthurian series.
That was going to be my suggestion as well. It’s not a particular favorite of mine, but it seems like a good choice for someone who’s new to the genre. It’s set partially in contemporary times (well, the '90s) with the young reincarnation of King Arthur, but a good chunk of it is flashbacks to the middle ages and even earlier. There’s a fairly clever take on the “true” history of the Holy Grail as well.
Maybe, but the best ‘alternative’ or ‘update’ versions play off the traditional, so reading Malory is worthwhile for more than its own sake.
Predictably, most of the ones I’d mention are already up there
T.H. White’s The Once and Future King, of course, gives you your traditional knights-in-armor, but with modern language and sensibilities. It was the basis for Lerner and Loewe’s musical Camelot. But also read White’s The Sword in the Stone. TSitS is the first part of The Once and Future King , but the stand-alone version, that White wrote first, is VERY different from the story as incorporated into the longer book. White took out a lot of stuff and changed the phrasing. It’s kind of like comparing the Tolkien of The Hobbit with the Tolkien of Lord of the Rings. The Disney cartoon was based on the stand-alone book. Also, you should read White’s the Book of Merlin, which was to have been the sixth and last book of The Once and Future King, bt was dropped.
Thomas Berger’s Arthur Rex is a hoot. It’s the story of Arthur as told by ban upper-clas twit, with all the sexleft in. This transforms the story of Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight completely. Lots of fun fro the author of Little Big Man (and lots of other stuff)
One much-neglected arthurian work is by John Steinbeck. yes – of Mice and Men, Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck. Definitely worth a read:
The aforementioned Mists of Avalon is a sort of Wiccan take on Arthur, as written by the Fraser-reading Marion Zimmer Bradley. The Catholics come off very badly in this one.
Some people find the old Arthurian stuff tough going. If you can plow your way through Malory, you’re very dedicated. Or Geoffrey of Monouth’s History of the Kings of England. But I certainly CAN recommend the poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Get a good translation. For my money, don’t read Tolkien’s version. I like the Penguin edition, myself. If you’re not familiar with the story, it begins with a Christmas celebration at Arthur’s court. In rides a kinght in gren armor who challenges any man to a duel – and the one who accepts this challenge gets to strike first. Sir Gawain accepts, and immediately cuts off the Green Knigt’s head. The headless body picks up the head, which tells the astonished court that Sir Gawain must meet him in a year at his own castle, when he will deliver his own blow in return. Carrying his head, the decapitated knight leaves. And that’s just the opening.
The headless warrior motif appears in the earlier Irish Bricriu’s Feast. The old stories are the best & never seem to die; a headless horseman appears in* Sleepy Hollow*, Fox’s new hit that is much more enjoyable than it ought to be.
I found The Mists of Avalon a slightly too earnest retooling of Robert Graves’ White Goddess theories, trying to make them fit the Arthurian thing. But it could have made a far better miniseries than the fiasco SyFy showed a few years ago. The Merlin series shown on SyFy (with Sam Neill, before the BBC version) was diverting–with just a touch of T E White…
So many stories–or so many versions of the same story. For kids or adults. Christian, Pagan or neither. Trying to be historic or lost in fantasy. Here’s the late John M Ford’s Winter Solstice, Camelot Station.
I’m not talking about the mere motif of a Headless Character – I’m showing one of the most marvelous set-ups in an Arthurian story. Once you’ve encountered that much of the story – Gawain takes the stranger’s bet, certain that once he’s hacked off his head, there’s an end to the impertinent knight and the whole business – and is confronted not only with the supernatural knight who can survive the hacking off of his head, but now knows that in a year that knight gets to cleave at his head, you’ve got a helluva setup. How can you not continue reading the story?
The Headless Challenge does appear in Bricriu’s Feast, but it’s in Athenaeus earlier still. It’s not in Irving’s story, though, or in Tim Burton’s interpretation. I haven’t seen the current series, so I can’t speak to that.
I just got this a week or so ago to add to my Arthur collection. For $4. 
Hope to start reading it this weekend.
I’ll add The Romance of King Arthur by Sir Thomas Mallory with beautiful illustrations by Arthur Rackham.
Looks like it’s just in hardcover, though.
No literaturologist am I, but it would surprise me greatly were I to hear of any research suggesting that the legend of Sleepy Hollow owes anything to the tale of Gawain and the Green Knight (or its precursors).
Of course, not directly. Both stories draw on more ancient tales; usually The Headless Oneis mounted. Not in the Gawaine poet’s account, or in the earlier Irish one…
Sorry if I confused the thread of pure scholarship here. Hey, Giles played King Uther in the BBC Merlin that inspired the OP!
My suggestion in this cluttered filed are two books that aren’t as well known but should be:
They are a retelling of the Tristan and Iseult story set in a post-Roman Britain and Ireland.
(Disclaimer: I love this author; in fact, I’m married to her.)
They show up in the “Warlord Chronicles” as well… Cornwell covers all his bases!
Me, too. Aside from their losing their heads, there are really no points of similarity. And the Headless Horseman actually lost his head. The Green Knight always knew where his was.
Headlessness alone doesn’t imply connection. The Medieval legens of the cephalophores – beheaded saints who carried their heads to their graves – don’t seem connected with anything else. I suspect they were inspired by damaged art – a high bas-relief figure could easily get its head broken off. In some cases this could easily inspire the legend. In the Isabella Stuart Gardner museum there’s high bas relief of the legend of John the Baptist, The Bapyist’s head is there on the plate. But the soldier nearby , who was in high relief, had his protruding head busted off, so it looks for all the world as if he’s carrying his own head.
The Once and Future King is, of course, the modern classic of the genre. Although I’m quite fond of Mallory.
I’d avoid, at all costs, the wretched Mists of Avalon, though. It is a thin Arthurian veneer over a tired screed about the evils of patrimony. The male characters are caricatures, the female characters are supposed to be nobly-suffering victims, but are in fact worse assholes than the men. By the end of the book, I was rooting for Morgaine to get her richly-deserved comeuppance.
Lawhead’s and Stewart’s books, as noted, were good. Also worth a look: Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.
Uther, the Half Dead King, by Bo Hampton and Dan Abnett.
In addition to the Merlin trilogy, Mary Stewart also wrote The Wicked Day. It tells the story of the fall of Camelot and the death of Arthur . . . from Mordred’s point of view.