The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Embarking on another childhood nostalgia quest. These are a bit more obscure than previous subjects, but I read them to tatters once upon a time. Literally tatters – I recall wearing out multiple cassette tapes.

Anyway, this is young fantasy inspired from Welsh legend (or appropriated, it depends on how you look at it). Taran, Assistant Pigkeeper, desperately wants to go on adventures, and then he gets some and discovers they are more difficult than assumed. Also, rescuing oracular pigs is complicated, yoe. I attempted not to think about this too hard, because if I did I would start asking awkward questions like "wait, is Taran thirteen or twenty?" (entirely impossible to say), or "wait, is this fantasy land roughly the size of a dozen football fields?" (entirely possible).

But the thing is, I had to think about this too hard because that's basically what I do, and also because the surface story here is incredibly young and it wouldn't otherwise hold my attention. So I thought about how this book plays with callowness. There's this great moment where Taran nearly drowns because he knows he can't swim, but he believes as soon as he gets in the water he'll figure it out. That's Taran all over. The quest of this book is about learning not to drown. It's not deep, but it is well meant, and it is flirting with more substantial questions of worth and the making of the self that I think? Based on dimly recalled spoilers, will be developed as we go.

Oh, and this is also patently Lord of the Rings transformative work for kids, if that interests anybody.




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