The Castle of Llyr

084, Book Review, Lloyd Alexander

This is book three in Lloyd Alexander’s famous Chronicles of Prydain series. We are perhaps seeing that the books have been far more successful than Alexander first imagined. In book 1 he killed off the evil witch, Achren. But now that he has more books to write he has brought her back because, just like in comics, no one is dead forever.

The basic plot of The Castle of Llyr is that Princess Eilonwy has been sent to be fostered with King Rhuddlum on the Isle of Mona, because you can’t learn to be a proper princess living in Bristol, sorry Caer Dallben. But Archen has plans afoot to kidnap her.

Much of the rest is entirely predictable. Taran saves the day, with a lot of help from Gwydion and a little from Gurgi and Fflewddur. The castle of the title is Eilonwy’s ancestral home, which Archen has taken possession of. The story is moving further and further away from actual Welsh myth, and closer to a creation of Alexander’s own, which is probably a good thing.

Something that I did take note of is the geography. Obviously this is Alexander’s own world, and it should not be expected to map onto ours, but there are a lot of similarities. Eilonwy and Taran have to sail from Bristol to Anglesey. It is absolutely right that they should hit rough water when the Severn Estuary meets the Irish Sea. But why they should ever be out of sight of land on the trip is a mystery.

There are some elements of the story that I’ll be interested to follow up in the final two books. Eilonwy ends up giving up her sorceress powers, which seems a little unfair. I hope she gets something back. Archen loses all of her powers too, and gets taken prisoner. I suspect that Alexander plans to do something with her again. And finally Taran and Eilonwy are slowly coming into adolescence and are struggling with new emotions. I wonder how far that will get by the end of the series.

book cover
Title: The Castle of Llyr
By: Lloyd Alexander
Publisher: Usborne
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
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