All my friends are dead, and we're lost in a dark and very expensive forest

[bloodygranuaile]

I remember little about the last Prydain book, The High King, only liking it very much. Rereading it, I can see how little me must have thought it the most wondrous and exciting thing, although I'm sure that a lot of it went right over my little head, especially all the stuff at the end, which is a bit heavier than I remembered, although it all turns out well enough.

 

In this book, the magical sword Dyrnwyn has been stolen from Prince Gwydion by Arawn Death-Lord, who probably can't weild its power anyway, but now nobody else can either. This obviously necessitates the entire cast of characters from the first four books all getting together to defeat Arawn once and for all and stealing the sword back. Taran has to rally all his friends, including the folk of the Free Commots who only ever go and fight if they feel like it since they have no lords, and then has to balance being a rookie battle commander responsible for the lives of hundreds of other people with his own longstanding desires to be a Big Damn Hero, plus his intention to ask Eilonwy to marry him, which he basically never has a good moment to get around to doing until all the way at the end even though it's been his intention since the beginning of Book Four. There are a lot of plot elements here that are STRONGLY reminiscent of Lord of the Rings, even more than usual, like when they try to go through a difficult mountain pass in a bitter snowstorm, right down to being led by a dwarf to take an underground path instead that all then goes horrendously wrong (there are no Balrogs in this book, though). All the threads of various characters' stories are tied up very neatly, which is very satisfying in a children's book, and Hen Wen makes a prophecy in the beginning, which is finally all sorted out right at the end. Arawn's death seems a bit fast, but that's how things happen at this reading level, I suppose, and anyway we've never spent as much time in this series face-to-face with Arawn himself as we have with other lesser villains and henchmen and regular terrible people. If you're older than about twelve, you get no points for guessing who the High King in the title winds up being. 

 

All in all, the whole series is just the quintessential kind of really charming, whimsical, mythologically-based adventure fantasy that makes you want to wear a bedsheet as a cloak and go chase your siblings with sticks until you're old enough to start going to Renaissance Faires and that kind of goofy stuff. I am partly blaming rereading these for my purchase of a pewter cloakpin at a touristy little gift shop on the Halifax waterfront, but it's possible the blame should be more properly placed on having read them the first time, which is the sort of thing that helped me grow up into the type of person that thinks Celtic knotwork-patterned pewter cloakpins are a reasonable and useful purchase that I will obviously get lots of wear out of in everyday life (which I will, because it is small and therefore perfect for scarves; I am wearing it *right now*). Anyway, highly recommended if you have a little geek in your life; these are classics for a reason.