3 out of 5 Covers
This collection of short stories set in the Land of Prydain
highlights much of the history of the land and many of the secondary characters
from the series. There are origin
stories for how Dallben became a wizard, how Fflewddur Fflam received his harp
that breaks whenever he tells a lie, and how Coll the warrior became a pig
keeper. Other stories tell how important
artifacts in the series came to be.
Throughout there is a strong sense that each story is a
fable meant to teach a lesson. Since the
main purpose is didactic, actual storytelling is secondary. This is not to say that Alexander can’t do a brilliant
job with this kind of writing, but it doesn’t have the same spark as the rest
of the Prydain chronicles.
This tends to be a problem with most didactic stories. It is the characters that should come first
and then the morals and lessons can be interwoven as a subtext. Even if the lesson is the text, if the reader
doesn’t care about the characters first, then the moral has less impact and may
even ring hollow. And most of the reason
the reader would care about the plights of these characters is from
pre-existing knowledge from the Prydain Chronicles. Even then, the impact of the stories is
undercut by the fact that the reader already knows the fates of these
characters. These stories serve as
prequels to put the characters in place for the first book in the series, The Book of Three.
As a rule of thumb, prequels are not as good as the
original. This volume is really for
completists of the series.
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