Telling Pool Book

In many ways I would have seen this as a children's book, but it had an attempted rape in it... That seems like something children ought only to read about after they have read many positive things about sex. In general gender in the book was stereotypical and problematic.

The book almost touched on a lot of big ideas, but stopped short of white critiquing the crusades, war, racism or toxic masculinity- it nudged toward these critiques but seemed to lose its nerve and at the end Rhodri seems to come to some conclusion (that we are meant to see as evidence that he has become a "man") that Lionheart's overenthusiastic pursual of war is excusable on the grounds that "He now knew it took much to be a king."

Other problematic ideas are- Owen's domestic violence is not because of PTSD from the war, nor is it in any way his own fault but it because a bad, sexy enchantress took his heart out of him (she is staying young and beautiful fakely of course)
-The hierarchical world-view is OK once Rhodri is manly enough to know how to swear fealty to William and his main rival is demoted to "only a groom".
-Weird stuff around heterosexuality being inevitable but with it women existing for men as preparers of food etc.

Anyway around and about all the stuff I didn't like was cool stuff like Melinor the hunting birds, some very vivid scenes of the crusades (seen through the magical pool) and the lovely way that Rhodri decided to go against the antisemitism of his society and befriend Rebecca. There was some discussion of values that I couldn't completely disagree with, despite the context I objected to. At the end of the day I am generally interested to know more about Arthurian legends, and even though this didn't add a lot to my understanding of it, I do enjoy people's attempts to work with that legend.