The Book of Three

Reread this recently based on memories of 40 years ago liking this as a boy. It holds up! Still an enjoyable read. The story is awfully straightforward and simple but that's totally appropriate for a children's book. I appreciated that it had a fairly good female protagonist in Eilonwy; she's a sidekick but she's got plenty of agency and is capable. Of course as a boy and now I identify mostly with Taran, the main character, and it's sweet how he's such a bumbling kid who means well and somehow managed to always do OK.

I think it's Gurgi who's the best drawn character. His strangeness, his craven incompetence that hides real heroism and capability. Also the great rhyming phrases, "munchings and crunchings" is something that's reverberated in my head every since I read the book 40 years ago. Just a fun character.

I was struck by how thematically similar this was to Lord of the Rings. I guess that shouldn't surprise me; same source material and I imagine Alexander was not dumb and willing to borrow from Tolkien's success. The book stands on its own but the overlaps were quite clear.