By Carrie Ryan [Goodreads]

Mary’s village is the last village, the only village, haven to only living people left in the entire world. Beyond the village fences is the Forest of Hands and Teeth, full of undead Unconsecrated who hunger for human flesh, and only the word of the Sisterhood keeps the village on God’s path and protected. But Mary stumbles on to a secret, a stranger from Outside, which means the Sisterhood has been lying for generations. But what are the Sisters covering up — and what is outside the Forest?

There’s some general spoilery stuff unhidden under the cut.

When I was in sixth grade I read a Goosebumps book and it scared the crap out of me, and I think this is the first horror novel I’ve read since. But I figure that zombies fall close enough to sf/f to review here, right?

The book’s biggest weakness is pacing. The first half flounders a bit, as Mary deals with the loss of her parents (both zombie-fied), being turned away by her brother, being forced into Sisterhood because no one will propose to her and then getting proposed to by the wrong brother (there’s a love triangle through much of the book, which is really not my thing at all), and some mystery and intrigue, but it took a really long time for me to get into it. Basically what finally snapped me into the narrative is the zombie attack roughly halfway through the book, when the Unconsecrated breach the fences and Mary and her companions are forced out of the village. That is a long time to settle in. And even after that point it still drags in parts.

The characters also wavered in quality. Overall, I liked Mary; I liked that despite the love triangle, she was driven by a need for more, I liked that she was human enough to freeze up at a few key moments but keep moving at others. She’s a first-person narrator, so it isn’t shocking that she was the strongest character. But I didn’t buy the love triangle, or her relationship with her best friend, because we never really saw why any of their relationships were happening the way they were. Mary loved Travis for… some reason? I never got much of a sense of why she was so desperate for him — or even why she wanted him over Harry, since I never got much of a feel for either one. Ditto for her friend Cass; they have a lovely moment near the end, but we never see them as friends before all of the tension between them, so I never cared much about their friendship. (That said, her relationship with her brother is a bit better, since it actually grows and changes through the book, so I got it on a deeper level.)

Final frustration: the book raises a lot of questions about their society in general and the Sisterhood in particular, some of which I’ll stick behind a spoiler cut: show

But with all that said, what the book did well it did very well. I am a wimp when it comes to horror, but I think this book is legitimately scary. Like, I could only read it in small chunks, and not too soon before bed, because I needed a few minutes of daylight and sunshine and non-zombified human contact after a spell of reading. Two other words come to mind: claustrophobic and unrelenting. That’s what makes it all work, I think; the antagonistic force will never stop coming and are always right there with only a fence separating them from the antagonists — and in some places the path is so constrictive that they can only walk in single-file, with zombies on either side of them trying to break through and kill them. And as for unrelenting, it isn’t just the zombies; it’s that Ryan doesn’t pull punches with how death-filled this world is — it isn’t just that several characters die along the way, it’s that as I edged closer to the end, every time Mary faced a group of zombies I wondered if maybe Mary was going to die. Not in a general, “Oh, the hero is in danger,” way, but because despite being in the first person, it seemed like a totally viable way for the story to end. There are moments of hope worked into the narrative, but it is freaking bleak. Really well-done bleak, but bleak.

Overall, I think this book was not really my cup of tea — the world building was well put together, but not enough questions were answered to satisfy me as a reader; and while the horror elements were very well done, they aren’t something that makes a book for me, personally. I’m on the fence about the companion; curious, but not enough so to spend money on it. So: three and a half cupcakes.

Charlotte and Zee have had enough Greek god-based weirdness in the past few months to last a lifetime, but they know they’ve got more coming, especially when their mortal enemy Philonecron gets his hands on Poseidon’s trident, and gets it in his head to take over the universe. Now Philonecron’s wreaking havoc, Zeus is seriously considering eliminating humans entirely, and Charlotte and Zee have to sort through a secret society, an ancient weapon, and a prophesied “secret son” before they can even think about hurdling the final obstacle: Mount Olympus itself.

I posted about the first two books in this trilogy, The Shadow Thieves and The Siren Song, waaaay back in the early days of this blog, and waited quite a long time for this one to finally see print. I won’t really go into detail about the basic plot/prose/character stuff, because I already said it in the earlier review, and all of it still stands: the prose and pacing are uneven and the villain isn’t great, but the take on the gods is often laugh-out-loud funny, and Charlotte and Zee, the protagonists, are completely lovable.

What Ursu added with this book was a lot more soul-searching, and attempts at some sort of deeper theme. Unfortunately, there’s kind of way too much of it. Charlotte and Zee spend an awful lot of time harping repeatedly on concepts that never bothered them before (Charlotte feels guilty about worrying her parents, Zee feels passive and guilty about endangering Charlotte), and while it’s certainly likely that these feelings would come up after the events of the first two books, the fact that they never thought about them before and are now completely preoccupied with them, going on for pages and pages about the same thing over and over again, is frustrating for the reader.

Ursu also seems to be, as I said above, looking to pull out a moral or three, but it’s more just sort of grabbing at any moral in reach than a clear progression. There’s a lot of discussion of ends and means, and whether the sacrifice of one person is an acceptable price to pay for the salvation of humanity. Ursu’s conclusion is very clear: no, if you’re sacrificing someone else; yes, if you’re sacrificing yourself. While that’s certainly a common conclusion and not one that I necessarily think is wrong, I kind of wish the other side had gotten the chance to weigh in more. Maybe it’s because I was reading the TVTropes pages for The Spock and The McCoy right before I read that part of the book, but I think the idea that the needs of the many sometimes outweigh the needs of the few is a fair position to take, and I wish it had been considered instead of instantly rejected. (Again, I’m not taking a position myself, I just think it’s a debate that deserves equal arguments from The Spock and The McCoy before The Kirk makes a decision. Also, I’m sorry for linking you to TVTropes, and I’ll meet you back here to finish the review after you spend three hours there.)

There’s also a lot of talk about the difference between justice and revenge. Fine, great, awesome, no problem. Except, well. It’s pretty spoilery, but show

And there’s the question of knowledge, and free will. Our heroes are seeking the fire of the gods, which Prometheus originally gave to mankind; if they use it, all of humanity will be aware of the gods. The Prometheans, a secret society dedicated to protecting the world from the gods, are also dedicated to keeping the gods a secret, which they figure is the same thing. Charlotte asks why humans don’t have a right to know, and never gets an answer. Then…okay, sorry, another spoiler: show

These are all interesting questions. I have no problem with any of them, or all of them, being present in the book, but I do have a problem with the way they were handled, and the fact that they sort of rambled all over the place, crashing into each other willy-nilly. I really felt like the book could have used some serious streamlining in the editing process.

All that aside, I did enjoy it. Like I said, parts of it were very funny, and I adore Charlotte and Zee. The actual adventure parts of the plot were exciting; I didn’t want to put the book down, which is always a plus. And the very real love Charlotte and Zee have for each other hit me right where it counts, so points for that. (I have a weakness for cousins who live in the same house and are best friends, especially if they are a boy and a girl. It is a very strange, specific weakness, I know.)

The Immortal Fire certainly had its problems, but it was a fun book, and so it gets three and a half cupcakes. Not bad!

Fire is a human monster with the power to captivate people, to slip inside their minds, to force them to believe what she wants — a power she fears, because of all of the evil her father used his power for. But when her country is in danger and the King himself pleads for help, she’s forced to confront her worst fear: herself. Is there a way for her to use her powers for good, or is she destined to be the monster everyone calls her?

I really wanted to love this novel. I absolutely adored Graceling, Cashore’s debut novel; Fire is set on another continent on the same world and ties in a little bit. But this book just didn’t quite do it for me. I think that’s because Fire, as a character, just didn’t do it for me, and there wasn’t much to the book except for Fire. Fire isn’t a bad character or anything, but she was too passive to carry a book of this length along. The main conflict of the book is internal — should she use her power or not? — and until she makes that choice she’s almost entirely reactive, swept along by what few events there are. It makes her come across as pretty wishy-washy, and while that was happening, there wasn’t enough sense of urgency in the external plot to keep me engaged.

The external plot wasn’t terribly engaging, either — political intrigue, and a lot of talk about a potential war, but as I said, lacking much sense of urgency. Then there was a kidnapping sequence, which at least was a major thing happening, but it felt pretty pasted on, awkwardly shoehorned in to give the book a tie to Graceling. It didn’t really need that — it was cool to get the Graceling villain’s backstory, but that section of the book really had nothing to do with anything else.

That said, there were some interesting things happening in the book. A lot of it seemed to be an exploration of female sexuality — Fire’s monster powers make her irresistible and desirable, but that’s a real problem more often than not. Other people (particularly men) harass her, desperately wanting her whether she wants them or not, and a lot of them simply feel entitled to possess her. (The interplay between Fire and her best friend/occasional lover Archer was really good in that regard — he did care about her, but also was jealous and protective of her in a way that was inappropriate, and she often let him because it was easier than fighting; but at the same time she resented it and wanted him to respect her, not just desire her. Great dynamic, one of the best parts of the book.) Plenty of people are in love with Fire, but there are also plenty who hate her — because she is an object of desire (very clearly an object in those cases) and they can’t have her. And the juxtaposition of Fire and her father was intriguing — he was also a monster, also always an object of desire, but as a man he was able to own and control his sexuality, and able to revel in it; as a woman, those same things caused Fire trouble, put her in danger, and made her afraid of her own sexuality.

Ultimately, I don’t think I agree on the book’s take on sexuality — as with everything else in the book, Fire is passive throughout, and never really hits a point of coming in to her own or having her own desires. She’s also obsessed with the idea of children, and how she will never have any, but questions her very existence if the point of her being alive and female isn’t to have babies. I’d have been a lot more frustrated by that, but the book wasn’t actually message-y about it; it read as more of an exploration of a lot of questions about sexuality and being a woman — as Fire’s opinions and conclusions, not as a real statement of How Things Are for the readers. (Though I would have liked to see an opposing position, personally, but it was a very limited third-person POV, so we never saw anyone but Fire’s perspective on anything.)

All that said, I did speed through the book; Cashore’s writing is enjoyable, and her world-building is fantastic. So the book slides in at three and a half cupcakes, a respectable grade, though I hope that her next book will pick up in action again.

Generations ago, Svein and the other great heroes fought back the Trows and made the valley safe for humans. Now there is peace and no need for heroes, which is a serious disappointment for Halli, younger son of the House of Svein. An adventurous misfit, he deals with his restlessness by playing practical jokes – until one of his jokes touches off a disastrous string of consequences. Now, with the help of the beautiful and fearless Aud, he must find his place and his purpose within the valley before his actions bring destruction down on them all.

Heroes of the Valley is a much more standard fantasy than Stroud’s previous books, The Bartimaeus Trilogy, with its medieval, Viking-esque setting and its misfit hero who longs for the adventurous days of yore. In fact, it’s a little too standard. One of the things I loved about Bartimaeus was how unusual it was, and Heroes is pretty by-the-book.

That’s not to say that it’s bad. Stroud is an excellent writer, and he puts across a standard fantasy novel well. Halli starts out fairly unlikable, and, as subsequent events humble and mature him, becomes an endearing if not terribly unique protagonist (although I do wish he’d displayed more of the mischievous nature that we were more told about than shown). The villains are properly threatening, and yet they are not particularly prominent in the book, which is surprising until you consider that the book is much more about Halli coming to terms with himself and his society than it is about him fighting any outside force. The minor characters, although tending to fall into Stroud’s “everyone is heartless and unsympathetic towards the hero” mold, were also well done.

Aud, for her part, reminded me of nothing so much as Eilonwy from The Chronicles of Prydain. She had the same fun-loving, fearlous outlook and the same acerbic lack of patience with the protagonist’s clumsy attempts at gallantry. Again, the usual tropes were trotted out: she defies society’s mores, her father’s trying to marry her off, the hero tries to keep her from the climatic battle and won’t admit that it’s because he loves her. I did like that she does what she wants throughout and is reasonably clever and capable, but I felt like I was waiting all book for her to sort of jump out at me with something notable, and she never really did.

I did enjoy the world building. The myths themselves were pretty standard, but the fact that the different Houses all insisted that their hero was the central figure in them was interesting and used to good effect, both for humor and inter-House tension. And the reveals at the very end were brilliant.

Still and all, Heroes of the Valley was basically a standard fantasy novel, solid and well-written, but nothing to write home about. Three and a half cupcakes.

Title: Nancy Drew and the Secret of the Old Clock
Author: Carolyn Keene
Genre: Mystery
Pages: 180
Summary: Nancy investigates a lost will that will benefit various virtuous spinsters and orphans, and eats several slices of cake.
Thoughts: Oh, Nancy. With only 50 minutes left I went for an easy reread, and Nancy’s super-polite badassery was as charmingly ridiculous as always.

Three and a half cupcakes

Final book/page count/hours tally coming soon, plus payment info for sponsors.

Title: California Diaries: Maggie, Diary 1
Author: Ann M. Martin
Genre: Teen drama llama
Pages: 180
Summary: Maggie is torn between auditioning to sing in a garage band, and being the perfect little daughter her movie producer father wants her to be.
Thoughts: Not bad. I tend to relate to school perfectionist stories. The poetry was dreadful, but that’s to be expected.

Three and a half cupcakes

Title: Ophelia
Author: Lisa Klein
Genre: Shakespeare fanfiction. Well, it is.
Pages: 328
Summary: Hamlet and beyond, from Ophelia’s point of view.
Thoughts: Hamlet is one of my favorite Shakespeare’s, and I’ve always loved Ophelia and wished she was given more respect, so I was very happy to see this in the store (even though Becky pointed out that the very pretty model on the cover looks like a girl version of Michael Cera, and now I can’t unsee it; I call her Sara Michael). It’s a decent story and a decent pastiche, and though I think this tomboyish, authority-flouting Ophelia is very much a modern construction and not terribly well-rooted in the play, I like her. I especially liked that not only did Ophelia get her story told, but that Gertrude’s character was explored in far greater detail and redeemed somewhat, plus the book was crammed with various female characters, all distinct individuals and well outnumbering the men. My two quibbles were a) that the final third was really Jesus-y, which is fine but not really my style as a reader, and b) scenes from the actual play were glossed over, assuming a familiarity with the material that I doubt the target audience has. I certainly could have done with a refresher. Oh well, it was still good.

Three and a half cupcakes

Creel’s family doesn’t have much money, so her aunt hits upon the idea of sending Creel to the local dragon. But Creel isn’t interested in waiting around for a knight to come rescue her, and instead bargains with the dragon for her freedom – and a pair of very special blue slippers. On the road to the capitol where she plans to seek her fortune as a dressmaker, Creel befriends another dragon who is very surprised by her footwear, but it’s not until she reaches the capitol and finds herself embroiled in a tangle of conspiracy, diplomatic intrigue, magic, and a very cute prince that Creel begins to suspect that her slippers are more powerful than she ever imagined.

I’ve mentioned before on this blog that I’m not a vampires girl and I’m not a fairies girl. What do I like, then? Dragons. Dragons are what I like. And dragons who are befriended by spunky heroines who then save the kingdom are the kind of dragons I like best of all. So you can bet I was happy to pick up Dragon Slippers, which features exactly that, and in spades.

Now, Dragon Slippers is not a perfect book. It’s George’s first published novel, and it shows; the prose is a bit amateurish, the transitions are weak, and the supporting characters are fairly flat. With the exception of Creel, no one has a history, or any particular motivations for acting the way they do that go any deeper than happening to belong to the good side or the bad side. Most of them are fairly likeable, but they’re not terribly interesting. A perfect example: when Creel first starts working in a dress shop in the city, her fellow assistants are the pretty Marta and Alle and the plain, crippled, put-upon Larkin. She immediately assumes that the pretty ones are catty and the plain one is nice, but the plain one turns out to be a puritanical traitor, and the pretty ones to be sweet, loyal, and friendly. It’s an interesting switch on the usual clichés of supporting female characters, but we never find out why Larkin is so very evil, or get any greater depth on Marta, who becomes Creel’s best friend, so the switch is kind of wasted. That is, the whole point of confounding readers’ expectations like that is to replace two-dimensional stereotypes with well-rounded characters, but George simply replaced two-dimensional stereotypes with…more two-dimensional stereotypes.

The end of the book was also handled rather awkwardly. It’s a pretty huge spoiler, though, so I’ll put it behind a cut: show

One final, very minor quibble: Creel’s specialty as a dressmaker is embroidery inspired by the stained glass windows her dragon friend collects, which is both touching and a fairly unusual skill for a fantasy heroine, but…I have a pretty good eye for color, even if I’m just reading about it, and her color combinations seem…kind of boring at best, tacky at worst? A yellow gown with embellishments in two different shades of green? Or a pale blue one with dark blue and green? I am highly skeptical of Creel’s talent! Someone needs a color wheel.

That said, I did really enjoy the book. Creel was spunky and cute, Prince Luka was appropriately dreamy, and the dragons were pleasingly grumpy. The world-building, especially the twists in the accepted history, were nicely done. All in all, it was a quick, fun read. Dragon Slippers gets three and a half cupcakes, and when the sequel, Dragon Flight, comes out in paperback next month, I will be all over that.

Cammie Morgan is a normal teenage girl… Or as normal as any of the girls who attend the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women. It may look like a high-end boarding school for spoiled heiresses, but Gallagher Academy is actually a school for spies. Cammie and her classmates all speak fourteen languages, can disarm a bomb in seconds, and can kill with their bare hands — but sophomore year is the beginning of something new for Cammie and her friends. It’s their first time taking Covert Operations, a class that teaches them the real ins and outs of being a spy. Cammie’s doing great on her first homework mission, until she hits a snag she never counted on. Cammie gets sighted… by a boy. And none of her training has taught her how to handle a normal relationship.

(Mild spoilers after the cut.)

I admit, I’m stretching the definition of science fiction here to include these books, but the girls are super spies who use all sorts of James Bond-esque high tech gadgets, so they aren’t totally out of the realm of the Aliens Among Us category, either. That said, they’re definitely more general YA than most of what we review here — they’re mostly about teen girl friendships, first loves, and fashion, set against a backdrop that happens to involve being spies. And it actually works really well, in some ways, because being a teen girl really can make you feel invisible (as Cammie often does), or like you’re hiding who you are (as Cammie must), or — this one hit me really hard — feel that you can be something special, if you just get the chance. Just like Cammie and her friends. So I kind of love the set up.

That said, the books themselves are very by the numbers in some ways. Cammie is definitely an Everyteen, despite being a spy. She’s the “normal” one of her friends, to the point where her strength in CoveOps class is how normal she seems. She has the standard best friends: a tomboy who looks like a model and a clumsy genius who also looks like a model, but of course, neither of them cares. Only Cammie, who is not nearly as beautiful, notices; and despite the fact that she’s supposed to be the most normal girl in the group, she’s the one the only boys in the series flock to. (That is, of course, definitely a YA standard.) There’s a super-rich mean girl she has to deal with and eventually befriend. She has a pretty good but not perfect relationship with her mom. She does well in school, but she’s not perfect. She’s just like you, but a spy!

So in the first book, Cammie bungles a homework mission but meets Josh, a very cute — but otherwise ordinary — boy. He flirts with her, and that’s a shock, because, since she attends an all-girls school, Cammie’s never really interacted with a boy before. Wacky hijinks ensue as Cammie creates a secret identity so she can go out with him, without him catching on to the Gallagher Academy. In the second book, the girls discover that there’s a spy school for boys, too, and when a group of boys comes to study at Gallagher for a semester, even wackier hijinks ensue.

I can tell you, I would have 100% loved these books when I was 14. Reading as an adult, I’m pretty meh — they were enjoyable, but not great. One thing that really didn’t work for me was the way Cammie really forgot a lot of her spy skills when confronted with Josh. It didn’t work because, while the book did a good job of selling reasons it would have been awkward for her to flirt at all — and to flirt with a normal, townie boy in particular — at the same time, if she’s been training almost her whole life, and she’s such a good spy, and great at CoveOps in particular, why did all of that training to out the window and leave her flustered? When boys aren’t around, Cammie is competent and kick ass; when they show up, she’s just… Not.

Taken to another level, you have my frustration with the second book: show

One other issue with book two: show

With all that said, though, there were some elements of the series that were pretty great. I love that Gallagher is all about sisterhood. The friendships are lovely, and I like that the ultimate moral of the first book is that boys may come and go, but Cammie’s friends will always be there for her. I like the way the books deal with Macey, the mean girl; she shows a fair amount of growth for a supporting character. I love the idea of the school in general — it was founded by Gillian Gallagher, who saved Abraham Lincoln from the first attempt to assassinate him (the one that’s not in the history books), but the CIA didn’t know what to do with a woman, so she founded her own school for exceptional girls. And I love that it’s about girls who are smart, tough, and tenacious.

In the end, these books are a lot of fun, but nothing terribly extraordinary. There were a few moments that were really good, but also a few gags that didn’t work for me. However, as I will almost certainly read the third book once it’s out in paperback, they both get three and a half cupcakes.

By Lloyd Alexander [series on LibraryThing — series on Amazon]

Taran longs to be a hero, but he seems destined to be merely an Assistant Pig-Keeper. However, even that’s a pretty big responsibility when the pig in question can tell the future, and when the evil Horned King, agent of the Death Lord Arawn, has his eye on her. With a ragtag bunch of companions, including the spirited Princess Eilonwy, the bumbling bard Fflewddur Flam, the loyal beast of indeterminate species Gurgi, the grumpy dwarf Doli, and more, Taran must fight first the Horned King, then Arawn himself – and discover who he is and what he really wants to be in the process.

My first exposure to Prydain was while leafing through The Encyclopedia of Walt Disney’s Animated Characters, an enormous and wonderful book by John Grant. Although Grant was complimentary towards Disney’s 80s flop The Black Cauldron, an amalgam of the first two Prydain books, he did admit that it couldn’t hold a candle to the books. I saw the movie a couple of years later, and it was pretty dreadful, but I was assured by pretty much everyone that the books were wonderful, fantastic, some of the best fantasy ever, on par with Tolkien and Lewis, etc, etc, etc.

When I finally got around to reading The Book of Three (the first book, followed by The Black Cauldron, The Castle of Llyr, Taran Wanderer, and The High King, I was…disappointed. It was…well, kind of boring. Not much really happened, the protagonist was unlikable, and the end was deeply anticlimactic. It took me another few years (God, I’m old) to get around to reading the rest of the series, and I’m sorry to say my reaction is about the same. I really wanted to love The Chronicles of Prydain, but…well, let’s take a look.

First off, Taran is, as I mentioned, completely unlikeable for the first two books, and completely forgettable for the last, with sort of a transition period in the third and fourth where he is by turns both unlikeable and forgettable. He’s your typical orphan boy raised on a farm by a mysterious sage but full of dreams of glory – pretty standard in fantasy. Of course, this standard was somewhat less standard when Alexander was writing, so I’m not going to blame him for the fact that countless writers have followed in his footsteps. However, Taran is also whiny, selfish, and stupidly impetuous. He spends pretty much all his time in the first couple of books insulting people, flying off the handle, and spouting elaborate speeches that sound like he memorized them out of ballads, particularly since no one else in the series talks like that. As he grows to manhood, he loses those qualities (for the most part – not entirely), but since those were his only qualities, he ends up as something of a nonentity.

Then there’s the climax problem. See, early in his adventure Taran teams up with Prince Gwydion, the most celebrated hero in Prydain, but due to a complicated series of circumstances, when they are separated, Taran (and the reader) believes Gwydion dead. When Taran finally comes up against the Horned King, he tries to fight him with an enchanted sword he’s been repeatedly told not to touch. It burns his hand when he tries to draw it and leaves him barely conscious, totally at the Horned King’s mercy – until Gwydion arrives, an army behind him, to defeat the Horned King by the expedient method of saying his secret name. Gwydion then tells us he was totally fine this whole time, that he escaped via a rather vague method that involved him learning all the secrets of the universe through meditation, or something, and that even though Taran and his companions were wandering pathetically around all this time and accomplishing nothing, it’s cool, Gwydion took care of both his own and Taran’s missions. So the hero is semi-conscious during the climax, the villain is defeated by someone else’s hand, and it turns out nothing the hero did during the entire book mattered. Are you kidding me, Lloyd?

The second and third books also end with someone else saving Taran’s bacon and defeating the bad guy, usually working in concert with Gwydion, which is why I got into the habit of looking up from the last chapter of each book and exclaiming “Gwydion ruins everything!” In the fourth book, Taran does actually face off against the villain – but after the villain’s sword breaks, he runs away, only to be eaten by wolves in the last book. Seek your narrative unity elsewhere, Aristotelians! And even when Taran faces Arawn himself in the last book, there’s a sense of anticlimax to it all – Taran stumbles upon the magic sword they’ve been seeking all book long, the one that knocked him out in the first book, and it basically does all the work with two sword thrusts. There was no moment of catharsis anywhere.

On the other hand, there were some very good aspects to the series as well. First and foremost in that category is Eilonwy. She’s smart, tough, and far more capable than Taran pretty much throughout the entire series, and yet she feels far more genuine than he does. She’s a princess, yes, and a budding enchantress, but more important she’s spirited and brave. I completely adored her, and thus was disappointed by the relatively small, passive role she plays in the third book, her absence from the fourth, and the end of her story in the fifth. She gives up her magic so she can stay with Taran, which is fine, but the wise old enchanted who raised Taran then declares: “Yet you shall always keep the magic and mystery all women share. And I fear that Taran, like all men, shall be often baffled by it.” At which point I lifted my head, tear-streaked from the moving end of the series, and said “Oh, Lloyd, you broke your book!” Still, when weighing the series as a whole, Eilonwy is pretty spectacular.

The other supporting characters (minus Gwydion) are pretty great, too. I loved Gurgi and Flewddur, and found myself unexpectedly sobbing when characters I’d hated at their introduction died. The language is beautiful and the world building is excellent. If The Chronicles of Prydain had a different story and a different hero, they’d be perfect.

In the end, The Chronicles of Prydain get three and a half cupcakes. A respectable enough showing, but I expected more from a legend. Oh, well. They can’t all live up to the hype, can they?