The Castle of Llyr

In my opinion, the weakest book of the quintet.

Prince Rhun makes his first appearance of the series (positive), as does Glew (negative). I thought Glew was annoying, and Spoilerreally, does he play any significant role in the series? Other than being a whiny, self-indulgent nuisance? thus, the fact that much of the story revolves around Glew's unfortunate predicament means that I found this title to be a lesser counterpart to the other four books in the series.

Furthermore, I thought the pace of the story fell off from the previous books, Spoilersave the final showdown between “our companions” and Magg, Achren & Co. and this further detracted from the tale. Of course, as this is one within the series, it is a necessary piece to the overall story of Prydain, and in this regard, as the middle book, it sets up the latter half of the adventure nicely.

★ ★ ★ 1/2 (rounded up)
This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
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Taran is tasked with escorting Princess Eilonwy to the Isle of Mona, where she'll be taken in by distant relatives – the king and queen, who will help her learn how to be a proper young lady (an idea she finds ridiculous). They sail there on a ship “captained” by the island's Prince Rhun.

Once they reach the island, Taran runs into Fflewddur Fflam, who's enjoying barding again – even if the castle's steward, Magg, has an intense dislike of his music. Shortly after that, Taran discovers there's a threat to Eilonwy in the castle and tries to save her from it without letting her know she's in danger. That goes poorly and he joins the rescue effort instead (also led by Rhun – or at least Rhun thinks so).

The companions also meet the world's littlest giant (why does that sound like it belongs more in The Phantom Tollbooth than here?) and a mountain cat that we'll get to spend a lot of time with. There's a lot of links to the first book as well as the last book in the series here.

The introduction by Alexander was great – I wish I could hear more of his own takes on the books. Langton was solid. Again, I think he could talk a little faster – but that's minor. His Prince Rhun's “Hullo”s are just what I've heard in my head all these decades.

This is probably the most entertaining of the lot – there's some really good comedy here. Taran grows up a lot more here than he does in other books, I think, which adds something more than just entertainment to this book. It's possible that this is the one in the series I read the most as a kid. The story isn't as rich as I remember, but factoring in the growth in characters and the entertainment factor, the experience as a whole was pretty satisfying – and I'll take that.

Short review: This third book in the series marks a turning point. Taran realizes that he actually has feelings for the Princess, but not until she is sent to live with some relatives to learn how to be a lady. While this is still mostly an action/quest oriented book, it is the most romantically oriented of the series. It is a good change of pace. Reading these again as an adult I am really impressed with how nicely the series is put together, not just how well written the individual books are.

Longer review on my blog at http://bookwi.se/castle-of-llyr/

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Another re-read

Summary: The Castle of Llyr is mostly a story about Taran coming to understand that he has feelings for Eilonwy. The Foundling and Other Tales is a book of short stories, more like Aesop's Fables, but designed to give context to the Chronicles of Prydain. 

Every time my family goes to Disney, my wife paints our magic bands to be personalized. This year, I asked her to paint my band to the theme of Disney's Black Cauldron. Like most people, my wife had never seen the Black Cauldron movie. When it came out it was the first Disney animated movie to be PG and it is fairly scary. We watched 30 minutes or so together to give her a sense of the art and context for her to paint the band. I went back later and watched the rest of the movie and was yet again disappointed that the movie was not better. It was not awful, but it changed the story too much combining the stories of the Book of Three and The Black Cauldron. And I think that while Taran and Eilonwy were presented well, I was not really a fan of any of the other character's development.

I decided to go back and read the third book in the series Castle of Llyr because I had not read it for a while and I wanted to see if maybe I could read it aloud to my children. I have not found some good read-aloud for my kids for a while. But the first two books are too scary for my kids at this point and the third one is too dependent on the first two books for context to be able to jump into it directly with my kids.

I don't know when my kids will be ready to read the Chronicles of Prydain, but I do look forward to it.

I am not sure why, but I have never read The Foundling and Other Tales. I was just unaware of the book until I was an adult. And I am not sure why I did not pick it up when I read the series about a decade ago. But I did pick it up and read it in a sitting. It is less than 100 pages and it is not difficult to read. The style is more like Aesop's Fables than contextual short stories for Prydain. I am not completely satisfied. I like the story about Dalben being found by the three witches. But when Dalben finds Coll and his pig (Hen-wen) it does not completely make sense of the timeline of the Book of Three. Either Hen-wen is about 20 or so years old at the start of the Book of Three (to make sense of Taran living with Coll and Dalben since before he could remember) or there is something wrong with the timeline of when Taran came to live with them.

The rest of the stories are fine, but nothing that really adds much to the understanding of the rest of the series.