Tag Lloyd Alexander

Book Review: Lloyd Alexander’s Westmark

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Westmark

by Lloyd Alexander

 

I grew up reading the Chronicles of Prydain by Alexander, and I only discovered as an adult that, in fact, the man wrote several other books. It’s been a lot of fun discovering and reading those other novels, even though it makes me feel kind of dumb that I didn’t already know about them; after all, Alexander won two National Book Awards and was nominated for four more, so . . . I guess everybody but me knew about his broader legacy. I would like to blame my parents for not telling me about Alexander’s other books. And also Piers Anthony, who so captivated my youthful love of fantasy that I read every single one of his books. Including his genuinely crappy autobiography, Bio of an Ogre.

Blame and castigations aside though, this is a genuinely good book. It is more adult than the Chronicles of Prydain: it really only belongs in fantasy because it’s Lloyd Alexander. He never writes with too much magic, but this book has none; rather, it has – politics. It’s about a printer’s assistant, Theo, who goes on the run after his master Anton is killed by the military as part of an attempt to control the press. The printer’s assistant hooks up with a con man and snake oil salesman who is a mixture of Shakespeare’s Falstaff, and the King and Duke from Huck Finn; he’s a big, bombastic, lovable rogue who makes no bones about the fact that he’s in it for the money and will tell whatever lies he can in order to get it. He’s a lot of fun and he makes the book a lot of fun.

It isn’t all fun and games, though: the fear and anger over the printer’s death and the subsequent flight are quite serious. Theo eventually parts ways with the con man and joins up with a group of intellectuals leading a rebellion, who are a great set of characters; the last third of the book is a quite realistic portrayal of the beginnings of a revolution, including Theo’s efforts to print anti-royalist pamphlets as his own efforts to free the people. Yeah: definitely not a simple children’s book.

The book leans more fantasy in the royal aspect of the politics: although there is a definitely historical feel in the elements about revolution, the causes of the nation’s oppression come straight from a fairy tale. The king is bereft and despondent to the point of uselessness over the death, several years ago, of his beloved only daughter. An evil counselor – I definitely think of Jafar from Disney’s Aladdin, or Flagg from Stephen King’s The Eyes of the Dragon – has taken over running the kingdom, and is trying to consolidate power for himself, becoming a tyrant in the process. He is overcome not by the revolution, but by the direct actions of our hero, who essentially saves the day – though there is a twist I won’t give away.

It’s a good book. The characters are well-drawn, as is the setting; the plot is a little haphazard, which I think is because of the mix of fairy tale and historical novel, but it isn’t hard to follow. And the other reason for the somewhat complicated course of the story is: this is the first book of a series of three. So there are seeds planted here, paths started but not taken to their ends, because there is more story to tell.

I’m going to try to find the other two books. I recommend this one.

One last note: the biggest downside of this book, for me, was honestly the cover. I hated this image, and the way it depicted the characters, so much that I tried not looking at it while I was reading the book, and even now I can’t stop thinking bitter thoughts. Yech. But of course, don’t judge this good book by its crappy cover.

The Foundling, and Other Tales of Prydain

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The Foundling: and Other Tales of Prydain

by Lloyd Alexander

I wish I had had this book the last time I re-read the Book of Three series, the stories of Taran the Assistant Pig-Keeper. Like any good fantasy buff, I read the books first when I was young; I was excited and then disappointed when Disney made The Black Cauldron and got everything wrong about the main characters (Though as I recall, the side characters were great, Gurgi and the Horned King and the three witches in the swamp.); I named my very first Dungeons & Dragons character “Taran.” Stole the name from my friend and fellow fantasy buff. I regret nothing.(Another side note: I met a guy, works at my local grocery store, named Taran. It was an exciting moment for me, because I am also named from a fantasy series of about the same era. He was not as excited. I believe his response was, “Is there anything else I can get you?”)

Anyway, I loved these books when I was young, but when I re-read them, I discovered something: they are terribly sad. They are based on old Welsh myths, and perhaps that’s the source of the sadness; but the general arc of the books tells the life of a young man who wishes for adventure, finds it, and then wishes he had never left home in the first place. It’s not all sad, he ends up well in the end of the last book; but especially in the third and fourth books, when he is feeling lost and directionless, trying to find himself and his purpose, there is a real angst that, after the sweetness of the first book, made me sad. There’s also a tendency in the books to see the villainous characters as not really that villainous, simply as victims of their own greed or shortsighted ambition or fear; this makes it much less fun to hate them and wish them ill. Which I suppose is the point, but fantasy is supposed to have villains, dammit. Villains who cackle as they twist their mustachios, and who get soundly and at least semi-permanently defeated by the heroes. And Lloyd Alexander didn’t do that.

But this book, which serves as sort of a coda to the five books of Prydain, makes up for that sadness. Because this book is delightful. It allows you to go back and revisit the characters once more, and to see them in other circumstances than in the series, most of which is taken up with the war against Arawn, lord of the land of the dead. It gives the backstory on Dallben (He’s the Foundling, raised by the three witches of the swamp, who are also the Three Fates), and Colm, and Fflewddur Fflam, and all of them. The stories are short, they are not sad (Other than Dallben’s, which isn’t all that sad because it leads up to the Prydain books, where he’s like a great big ice cream cake of awesome, and this tells how he got to be like that), and they help fill in a lot of the little gaps in the stories from the Prydain books. Basically, this is what The Silmarillion should have been, and it was wonderful.

And if I haven’t made it clear, this book really needs to be read as part of the larger series. I think it would be fine to read it first, as it gives a good idea of Alexander’s wonderful telling-stories-by-the-fireside writing style and it’s very short and easy to read; but I think it’s best to read it as I did, after reading the longer series, so that you can get a final grace note and a happy ending. That way seems the most satisfying to me. So for those Prydain fans who haven’t read this one, go get it now. Enjoy.