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Title: Taran Wanderer by LLOYD ALEXANDER ISBN: 0-440-48483-9 Publisher: Yearling Books Pub. Date: 15 July, 1969 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.74 (47 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: "Taran Wanderer", most powerful and poignant installment
Comment: I read many Newbery Award winners as a child, and none has affected me as much as "Taran Wanderer," the penultimate book in Lloyd Alexander's "Pyrdain" series. I was fortunate enough to have found the book at age 12, and the protagonist's coming of age experience paralleled my own coming of age as a reader. Although the first three installments in the "Pyrdain Chronicles" are beautifully written children's fantasies that teach important life lessons, "Taran Wanderer" possesses a maturity and complexity making it the jewel of the series. No longer seeking magical cauldrons and oracular pigs, Taran embarks upon a vague quest for self discovery that finds him engaging in lackluster tasks such as weaving and pottery-making that rarely appear in a children's fantasy. While "Wanderer" still contains the requisite evil wizards, talking crows, and magic harps, somehow Pyrdain has become a less black-and-white world. After reading "Taran Wanderer," both Taran and myself were no longer children, and the action-packed finale of the "High King," despite being wildly entertaining, could not recapture the innocence of the earlier books. The work introduced me to an adult world demanding diffuclt choices and temperance, a world which sadly replaced the delightful child's land where a magic sword could vanquish evil. However, despite this sacrifice, Taran's journey is one worth making, and Lloyd Alexander gracefully introduces his young readers into an adult world surrounded by a subtler type of magic. Ten years later as a computer science graduate student, I can honestly say that the impact of "Taran Wanderer" has not faded.
Rating: 5
Summary: The Most Meaningful Book I've Ever Read
Comment:
I read it at six. I read it at sixteen. I read it at twenty-six. I read it at home. I read it wandering. At all times and all places, I have identified with Taran Wanderer more than any other literary character. I'm not excluding Shakespeare, the classics or modern novels.
Taran is a boy trying to become a human (it applies to girls just as much.) This is the beginning of all great mythology, as the late Joseph Campbell would have agreed. This boy travels through a world of magic swords, undead warriors and medieval villages. It is an escape. Or is it? Taran deals with truth, the true worth of himself and others, the search for meaning in a career and in life, the excitement and high price of violence and love. I AM Taran in 1997, as much as he is in an imaginary world. I bet a lot of you are, too.
Alexander never talks down to you, whether you are young or old. It is fun and meaningful. This fourth book of a wonderful five-book series is an excellent encapsulation of the entire series. This is not a book for adults or children. It is a book for people. A great one.
Rating: 5
Summary: A wonderful character piece
Comment: This book is definitely the most unique of all the Prydain Chronicles. Instead of urgent quests to find magical pigs, destroy evil cauldrons or rescue a beautiful princess--with good constantly pitted against the forces of evil--this volume is instead focused on Taran finding out about himself.
Instead of a quest resolved in a matter of weeks or months, this story covers a couple of years, years in which Taran travels from one end of Prydain to the other, first in search of his parents and then in search of his own place in the race of men.
His motivation lies in a desire to be worthy of the Princess Eilonwy's hand in marriage; she's absent from the story, still on the Isle of Mona, so Taran's only constant companion is the loyal creature Gurgi.
Old friends Fflewddur and Doli make brief appearances, though the bulk of Taran's time is spent meeting new people: the old farmer Aeddan and his wife, who fight for survival on a land impoverished by the Death-Lord Arawn; Goryon and Gast, petty lords whose bark is worse than their bite; Morda, the enchanter who despises the race of men in its entirety; the outlaw Dorath and his men; the shepherd Craddoc; and the people of the Free Commots: Llonio the lucky, Hevydd the smith, Dwyvach the weaver, Annlaw the potter, and Llassar the farm boy.
The lessons Taran learns in his travels aren't always obvious or profound for the casual reader, and the limited amount of swords, sorcery and peril may be unusual for some. However, the transition Taran makes into manhood is handled convincingly and realistically with each step he takes.
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Title: The Foundling and Other Tales of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander ISBN: 0140378251 Publisher: Puffin Pub. Date: February, 1996 List Price(USD): $4.99 |
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Title: The Beggar Queen by Lloyd Alexander ISBN: 0440905486 Publisher: Laure Leaf Pub. Date: 01 September, 1985 List Price(USD): $4.99 |
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Title: Westmark by Lloyd Alexander ISBN: 0141310685 Publisher: Penguin USA (Juv) Pub. Date: January, 2002 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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Title: The Kestrel by Lloyd Alexander ISBN: 0141310693 Publisher: Firebird Books Pub. Date: June, 2002 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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Title: The Prydain Companion: A Reference Guide to Lloyd Alexander's Prydain Chronicles by Michael O. Tunnell ISBN: 0805072713 Publisher: Henry Holt & Company, Inc. Pub. Date: 01 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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