I could either read this book as the main character is way too full of himself and is simply too arrogant to care for, or I could see him as a stupid man who does not realize that crowbars do not have the power to send him back in time, and therefore he must have suffered a critical brain injury. As I did not wish to read 450 pages fuming the entire time, I chose the later.

Ignoring the fact that time travel via crowbar is impossible, I would say the first real evidence that this is a hallucination is the fact that everyone is speaking English. If I remember correctly, English as we know it did not exist yet. It was practically a completely different language, and as such an American man should not have been able to understand.

Assuming, however, that this crowbar is a miniature TARDIS, and let him understand other languages while it sent him traveling through space and time, then let's just go right to how he knows everything. He knows exactly when a solar eclipse happens (to the minute no less!) and can somehow invent all these modern devices, and teach so many others how to operate them, along with modern war tactics. This kind of knowledge just does not exist in this world, not to mention that opening schools to teach it involves educating the educators, and he simply did not have that kind of time.

Speaking of time, every single time things become a bit of a pickle for him, it works out exactly right. Such as "it's the wrong day for the eclipse and I'm going to die." Hold on a minute there! It's actually the right day now. Or " the king and I are about to die because I tried to escape." Look at that, the knights that were not supposed to show up for several hours appear in just the nick of time. Or even "the king is about to be trampled by angry knights!" Well, it just so happens you have been carrying armed dynamite in your bag this entire time, that definitely will not harm Arthur despite him being close by. Then, finally, there is "everything I have worked for has crumpled the second I stepped away" (like a dream falling apart, you might say). Well not to worry, as you get stabbed and then saved by your archnemisis who apparently really did have magic this entire time, while everyone else conveniently dies off.

So anyways, this dude was clearly hallucinating, and he suffered enough trauma to believe the work was written before he woke up, and it later killed him.

As for the actual writing, I am going to ignore the satire in the book about kingdoms and the Church (although it felt overdone sometimes) and just go straight to Merlin. Even before he tried to kill the main character, he is made to look like an idiot. What is this about? Why does Mark Twain hate him so much? And why does he save Hank in the end, cause I take it he did not go all that way just to make him suffer, especially since he sets the timer for thirteen hundred years, so he wakes in his own time again. It is quite peculiar.

Anyways, if you like books about arrogant idiots, written by someone who probably needed a reality check about what a hallucination looks like, then this is a good book. It is just wild enough to be good.