Long before I fell in love with writing I fell in love with reading. Sometimes, honestly, I feel like I’m cheating on my first love when I settle into my office chair to start work on the latest manuscript. Back in my younger years I read an average of a book a day. That was when I was going to school full time and working a job after school 30 hours or more a week. Even now, years later, there are stories that I remember vividly. Some of them I remember so well and love so deeply that despite never having enough hours in the day I go back and read them again.
One series that I’ve done that with several times is Lloyd Alexander’s The Chronicles of Prydain, including The Book of Three, The Black Cauldron, The Castle of Llyr, Taran Wanderer, and The High King.
By the time I first ran across those books I’d already read a great deal of fantasy. Most of what I’d run across was (or at least seemed to me) a recycling of what Tolkien had done better with The Lord of the Rings. There were exceptions, and quite a few of them, like Michael Moorcock’s Elric and Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser and, of course, Robert E. Howard’s Conan, but the exceptions were mostly in the form of collected short stories. I loved them but there was something of a gap left that I was barely aware of.
And then I read The Book of Three. It started like so many of the stories I’d read, with a young boy on the cusp of manhood in a less-than-glorious position and hoping and dreaming of better things for himself. Better things that never quite seemed to come around. And then, his world is changed.
Prydain is very much its own place, but steeped in the traditional stories of Welsh mythology, stories I was familiar with, but never really all that taken by. Alexander’s writing changed all of that. His prose is direct. He seldom went into long and flowery descriptions, instead giving only small hints about what a character might look like and letting the reader connect the dots to find the hidden details. That stood out with me, because I have always preferred to draw my own conclusions on many things, and that includes what characters look like.
The story might have been the typical fare from when I started reading fantasy, it could have fallen into the very mold that drove me away from fantasy fiction for a while. The basic story I seemed to keep running across came down to this: lad dreams of adventure, laments the mundane existence, finds himself confronted by an Ancient Evil, and as the story progresses finds The Item Of Power that can save the world. Now, at that point, the lad becomes the Future Champion, if only he can somehow be kept safe by his new friends and the brave soldiers who will defend him until he can get where he’s going. Not all that much like The Lord of the Rings, but I can’t help seeing certain elements that keep creeping in. All of these things came up all too often and, if you were lucky, you could also run across the prophesy that demanded our hero alone could save the day.
There are some of those very elements in The Chronicles of Prydain, if I’m being honest. There are definitely a few similarities and I suspect Tolkien had his influence on Alexander, though I’ve no proof of it.
I said the story might have been the typical fare. Happily, it was not.
Instead—without giving away too much, I hope—Taran, the apprentice to a pig farmer who wanted so much more for himself, quickly finds himself deep above his head and drowning in chaos.
He does, in fact, run across a mythical Weapon of Power, and the very first time he tries to draw the blade he gets a serious lesson in humility. All the daydreams in the world have not prepared him to deal with a weapon that can only be drawn by somebody worthy of wielding it.
That is the moment that Taran’s real quest begins. Not the quest to defeat Arawn Death-Lord, though that is the name of the Ancient Evil in this particular case. No, his quest in a very real sense, is to survive growing up. J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter deals with a similar crisis in the books that share his name. Stephen King and Peter Straub’s Jack Sawyer suffers the same ordeal in The Talisman. It is not a new concept. Coming of age stories are legion. The difference is in how the story is told.
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The Book of Three, 50th Anniversary Edition
Taran grows because he is physically maturing and because he is slowly, methodically, stripped of his innocence in many ways and forced to make choices that are, frankly, the sort that should be made by adults. Lloyd Alexander says, through the mouth of one of the wondrous characters in the books, that there are “Three principles of learning; see much, study much, and suffer much.” (That’s in quotations, but I am paraphrasing.) Taran is forced to learn in order to become an adult. In order to, in time, be ready for fighting against Arawn and his legions of Cauldron Born, undead soldiers that obey without fear of pain, or death, or loss. Through the course of the tales it isn’t just Taran that makes the sacrifices, either. He learns through example. He learns through action, he learns, amazingly enough, in much the same way that real people learn. And we get to go along for the ride and learn vicariously through his eyes.
The fight scenes are well done, dark and brooding and violent. The scenes between Taran and the girl he’s slowly falling for are wonderfully handled and the cast of characters, some who live and others who die and leave a gaping hole for the lack of them, are vivid and brilliant.
Ultimately, Lloyd Alexander’s tales of Prydain were enough to make me come back and visit again and again and each time I laughed and I wept. Each time. No exceptions.
What an amazing feat! What wondrous tales!
What a powerful talent.
Lloyd Alexander’s tales were written and published when I was in diapers. Decades later they remain utterly timeless for me. I cannot recommend them enough.
This article was originally published in July 2014 as part of our Writers on Writing series.
James A Moore is the author of over twenty novels, including the critically acclaimed Fireworks, Under the Overtree, Blood Red, Deeper, the Serenity Falls trilogy, Seven Forges, and its sequel, The Blasted Lands. He has twice been nominated for the Bram Stoker Award and spent three years as an officer in the Horror Writers Association.
I love the Lloyd Alexander books. One of the best fantasy series out there.
I’m fond of these as well, though I haven’t re-read them since my teen years. I remember doing a book report on one of the volumes in 7th grade (I think) and the teacher took over and read the rest of it to class cause I couldn’t pronounce the names.
I have only one complaint about the Chronicles of Prydain.
Nobody ever made a movie about them. Ever.
@2 I also read them as a teen and believe I too did a book report on the first book. Thankfully I didn’t have to read it to the class. Fantasy wasn’t the cool “in” thing that it is today, and I think I would have suffered for it.
Still great books, and a wonderful author. I went through his entire catalogue of books after finishing this series.
@@.-@. Kirshy: lol. Yeah, I got some weird looks afterward. Like, what are these bizarre Welsh-inflected names?
Now I’m regretting not keeping better records when I was young so I could figure out exactly when I read these (and the Tripods books and the Narnia books). I’m pretty sure it was before I read Tolkien.
And that’s correct: No movie. Why, the very thought is almost as laughable as someone making a Wizard of Earthsea movie. Or TV miniseries.
No movie? – Disney made a “The Black Cauldron” movie and it bombed
@7 The Disney movie’s relation to the text is questionable
The Book of Three is published in 1964. I checked the catalog at the library The Fellowship of the Ring and The Black Cauldron were both published in 1966. I think it’s the mythological aspect that makes them so similar. Tolkien on Norse and Alexander on Welsh. The Prydain Chronicles is one of my all time favorite series. I also enjoy Alexander’s other works too especially the Westmark books.
@7 – that’s the joke.
It would be nice to see well done movie(s)/TV series of these. (Even though I liked The Black Cauldron, but hadn’t read the books before I saw it either…).
I loved these books. I was probably 8-9 when I first read The Black Cauldron and fell in love. The hero was a kid, it was funny (an oracle pig made my giggle every time I read it), and there was a girl in it! And she was smart and obnoxious! Yay! Eilonwy, it didn’t matter that I couldn’t pronounce it and called her Eloise for years.
And at the end of The High King, when you as the reader have to decide if the ending is “happy, heartbreaking or both” still brings a tear to my eye.
As for movies, I almost would rather they didn’t. I would worry that the magic of the books couldn’t be captured.
Also, I love the cover up at the top of the article.
These are the ones I remember reading when I was young; I also love these covers.
Lloyd Alexander is the author closest to my heart. His characters, his world view, his wry humor … all of it shaped me into both the writer and the person I am today. I was devastated when he died–to this day I get a pang when I see his books on a library shelf and realize anew there are no new books from him to read, ever (and I still dream of someday someone finding one or two or a dozen lost manuscripts of his).
I fell in love with his writing through his least-popular books–the Vesper Holly series and the Westmark trilogy. From there I discovered Prydain and the rest of his stand-alone books. In Eilonwy I found a kindred spirit; I learned the true nature of honor and heroism right along with Taran. I’m so thankful for the gift he gave to the world in his stories.
My favorite thing about Alexander (of the many good things about him) is the textual support he gives to someone who is reading his stories aloud. I read them all to my daughter (now a grad student in English literature) and virtually every character has a verbal tic of some kind that lets you adapt a reading voice to them.
The Prydain books are based loosely on the Mabinogi, though Arawn there is merely powerful and scary but not villainous.
And, Louise @13, I share your enthusiasm for Vesper Holly and Westmark. Alexander has a great perspective on every real historical period he visits, whether directly or by analogy.
I didn’t find the Chronicles of Prydain until I was an adult, but I devoured them and then recommended them to my children, who were also voracious readers. I remember I *almost* couldn’t get past the idea of an oracular pig, but then I was so glad I did! (I read some of his other work, and enjoyed it, but nothing matched Prydain.)
Taran’s journey has always stuck with me. Particularly the quest he goes on, at one point — he stays with that loud, bright family who has the knack of making so much out of so little. He tries to become a weaver, and makes one good, solid cloak. He tries to learn pottery, and makes one good, simple bowl. He learns, in other words, small graces, not great ones. And it makes him worthier, to learn that these little, workaday things are as important, more so, than the vast dreams of heroes and adventures he once had as a callow boy. That lesson has always stuck out, in all my memories of these books.
@16. he stays with that loud, bright family who has the knack of making so much out of so little.
Llonio son of Llonwen was my favorite minor character in the book. **SPOILER** I was bummed when it was revealed that he was killed in battle, especially after he improvised weapons for the farmers.
Wow, these books are so wonderful. I still get a little choked up when I read the bit about Fflewddur Flam’s **SPOILER** sacrifice of his harp, even though the bit about the strings breaking in the fire was funny. Also, Eilonwy was the princess we needed, when we needed her, smudged face and all.
The revised version of The Fellowship of the Ring where published in 1966 (created in order to stop the ”legal pirate version” by Ace books). The original version where published in the early fifties, more than ten years before The Book of Three.
I have to recommend the audiobooks of these, read by James Langton. The accents are so pleasing to listen to.
I didn’t read the books until I was an adult, but I had always liked the film, and saw it original run. The cycle is amazing and a true testament to world-building and internal continuity.
I love these books. I read them when I was in elementary school, I read them to my son when was in elementary school (we only got through Taran Wanderer before he got tired of having Dad read to him aloud), and now I am reading them to my daughter while she is in elementary school. She is a red-head, so she was very excited when I told her a major character in these books was a red-headed princess. (She is quite put out with Alexander for starting to use the epithet “golden-haired princess” for her in Castle of Llyr). The books do bear a certain similarity to Tolkien, but then again Tolkien bears certain similarities to older mythologies, so that doesn’t bother me.
@14/David – I agree! The voices are quite distinct on the page, even most of the minor characters (e.g., Smoit). I think Gurgi is my favorite to read aloud. I’ve made Flewddur sound an awful lot like John Cleese (or as near as I can).
@2/Sunspear – I am certain I am pronouncing many of the names wrong, too!
I own a first edition, hardcover of Taran Wanderer and cherish it.
https://twitter.com/JMMcDermott/status/905519748569542660
If anyone wants to send me a first edition of THE FIRST TWO LIVES OF LUKAS KASHA, I’ll take real good care of it. I’ve often said that’s probably the most influential book of my creative life, which pushed me down this path from someone who just enjoys books a lot, to someone who understands how important it is to make them.
I know I read these young enough to not appreciate Taran Wanderer. I considered it the boring book of the series, and it has been one of the most interesting experiences of my life as a reader seeing how my relationship with that book has changed as I grow older and it becomes one of my favorites.
Now if only I could get my kids to read them! Or let me read them to them! For some reason they resist.
We did a reread of those here a couple years ago. If I could get the search widget to work I’d track down the link.
I first heard these books on my mothers lap. On my countless rereads, I still here her voice narrating.
The first time I heard about The Book of Three was in Amra, the Conan fanzine, of all places. I was 19. The public library in the small town where I lived had The Book of Three and The Black Cauldron. I loved them, but I wound up joining the Navy to avoid being drafted and had to abandon searching for them. I bought the set after I got out and still go back and read them periodically.
I gave the set to my young nephews, along with the Wierdstone of Brisingamen books, in a successful attempt to corrupt their reading tastes.
The Disney movie of The Black Cauldron was made at a deeply troubled time at the studio. It’s really no wonder it turned out a mess. Apparently it was even cut after the film was finished, something that had never been done at Disney before.
The thing I hated most about it was the horrible, spoilery TV spots that revealed “this is the only creature that can survive the Black Cauldron”. Then that turned out to be a big moment at the end, completely undermined by the ad because you knew said creature would not die. Arrgh!
If I’d been born any earlier (than 1955) I wouldn’t have had the pleasure of reading these books at a perfect age. I especially cherished them when I learned as a slightly older teen that the Narnia books were (auuuchgk! pleuahguew!) Christian allegory.
And you know, Diana Wynne Jones was Welsh, too. Last year I got to travel from my home in Oregon to Wales, and oh what at treat when you’ve read the right books.
I totally missed the Christian allegory in the Narnia books, embarrassing, but now that I know I don’t have a problem with it. Why should I? It’s no different from any other mythos. No offense to Christians intended.
@29: there’s nothing wrong with Christian mythology. I like stories of angels and demons. It’s when people take the supernatural literally that it becomes a problem.
As JRR Tolkien said: “I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history – true or feigned– with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.”
I guess I am more tolerant of allegory than the Professor.
@29/Roxana: I don’t remember if the allegory bothered me because the fact that Father Christmas gave the children weapons bothered me so much that the rest paled in comparison. Also, apparently a bunch of English kids are the best qualified to rule an ancient fairytale kingdom. I probably would have liked it better if I had read it at a younger age.
@30/Sunspear: It sounds like a clear-cut distinction, but is it really? IMO some of the best stories combine elements of both. For example, is Nineteen Eighty-Four allegory or history?
@33, I didn’t have a problem with that either. I was about thirteen at the time and my suspension of disbelief was in fine working order.
@33. Jana: Animal Farm is allegory, 1984 was near-future history when it was published. Orwell wasn’t actually forecasting to 1984. He simply swapped the 4 and 8 in 1948, while showing a version of what was already happening, both in England and Russia. For example, the change in alliances apparently overnight, with the attendant rewriting of history, happened when Russia went from ally against Germany to opponent in the Cold War.
It wasn’t so much a rewriting of history as a correction of a carefully fostered delusion about the real nature of Stalin’s government.
@36. Roxana: That was true in the real world, but I was referring to the novel’s Ministry of Truth, which cut and then pasted new “fake news” as if their old ally was the enemy all along. Then they burned the old documents and newspapers. Orwell was a genius at distilling this kind of governmental manipulation of the public. He was casting England as potentially falling into fascist rule, just like V for Vendetta. Wonder what he’d have to say if he was around today.
@35/Sunspear: I know, but wouldn’t you say that it has allegorical elements? Near-future England as the Stalinist Soviet Union, Big Brother as Stalin, Goldstein as Trotsky (whose actual name was Bronstein)? Some people on the Internet call it an allegory.
Was history rewritten in England when Russia went from ally to opponent? I’ve thought the rewriting of history was another element Orwell took from the Soviet Union, where it happened a lot.
Orwell was making things unnecessarily complicated. Why rewrite history when you can get people to just ignore it?
In fact, what is history anyway? Who can say for sure what, if anything, really happened? For all we know we could all be living in a computer simulation. Hey, look over there!
@38. Jana: I suppose in the strictest sense 1984 is an allegory.
“a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one.”
It works as an extended metaphor about the state of the world post WW2. But I prefer looking at it as elements from Stalinist Russia transposed to England (called Airstrip One in the book). In that sense it’s more aligned with Tolkien’s statement about the applicability of history. Been a long time since I’ve read Orwell, so don’t remember if he resisted the allegory label as vigorously as Tolkien did.
@40/Sunspear: Personally, I think the difference between Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four is that the latter works on more than one level. It’s an allegory, it’s an alternate or future history, and it’s also a story about people.
I somehow wound up with an omnibus edition of the Prydain series that is missing the dust jacket and didn’t show up on Goodreads. I was a little nervous revisiting it as an adult, but it held up.
I read these books when I was 11. I have to say when I read the climactic scene in The High King it was like a jolt of electricity went through my body.
I also appreciate how short these novels are. When I re-read Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings — wow those are long-winded and turgid. Alexander gets right to the point but he does it eloquently, not brusquely,
How I love this series! I’m 55 now and have memories that have lasted most of a lifetime.
The Chronicles of Prydain was my introduction to fantasy. I first read them when my mother gave them to my older brother in the mid-1970s, when I was about 7-8 years old. They will always be my first love in fantasy, and I am hoping that now that Disney has re-acquired the movie rights, they are going to do a full-bore, live action, all five books movie series to make up for still stinting Eilonwy after all these years in her well-deserved status as Disney Princess. ;)
The original illustrations were done by Evaline Ness, whose second husband was the famous US Treasury Agent Eliot Ness, and they are still some of my favorites.
These are my absolute favorite books of all time, and my obsession with them has spawned many friendships. Indeed I recognize a name or two in this comment thread as belonging to friends whose mutual love of this series was responsible for our meeting. I made a pilgrimage to Wales a couple years ago thanks to the inspiration of the Chronicles, and the experience was sheer magic.
At the risk of seeming self-aggrandizing, may I promote my graphic novelization of The Book of Three here? It’s a purely nonprofit fanmade project I’ve been working on for several years, unauthorized by the publisher but so far, apparently not a concern for them. The lack of a good film version of the Prydain books bothered me for so long I decided to start storyboarding them for my own satisfaction, and this grew into the project as it now stands. I have poured all my heart into it and I love hearing from fans of the series who discover and enjoy it.
It can be found at http://www.thebookofthree.thecomicseries.com