Review: Taran Wanderer

Taran Wanderer by Lloyd Alexander
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I won’t lie: this book was far from angering me as much as The Castle of Llyr did, but it still annoyed me.

 

It’s not particularly the levels of sexism that bothered me—Eilonwy being absent in this volume, those stayed relatively low, thanks for my mental health. It’s more the fact that it felt like Taran was regressing a lot?

The past books have caused him to learn a few valuable lessons about life, namely that what you do is more important than who your parents are, and that the worth of a man isn’t limited to how people view him…but Taran’s quest—and a lot of his actions—in this volume go directly against that.

See, in this volume of the Prydain Chronicles Taran, who has been living with Dallben for as long as he can remember, goes looking for information on who his parents were and where he came from. Is there anything wrong with this? Not inherently, no. Many adopted people try to figure out where they come from a one point or another, and even as someone who wasn’t adopted I think it’s perfectly natural to want to know where you come from.

Even the fact that Taran sets out for this quest out of a desire to know who he is before he asks Eilonwy to marry him isn’t wrong in itself.

 

What bothers me is that the explanation the book gives us as to Taran’s motivation is that, according to him, an assistant pig-keeper can’t marry a princess. Because apparently, the author didn’t think it was worth remembering that the previous three books taught us that noble deeds were worth more than noble blood. Or that, by that logic, Taran pretty much has nothing left to prove—given that the kings and heroes or Prydain all hold him in high esteem. Three books for nothing.

 

Those aren’t the only lessons forgotten through the book though. Taran previously learned that a glorious death is still just a death—yet he still tries to have a couple of peasants accept their son’s death with “But he died a hero!”. The kings, presented as noble (because of their deeds) so far are systematically shown to be disappointing because they’re being giant hypocrites (although one of them is smart enough to admit it, and even offers Taran a throne because he thinks Taran would be a better ruler than he is).

 

On the whole, everything is done to make Taran sound better than he really is, including glossing over his overwhelming hypocrisy.

Namely, during his quest Taran meets a sorcerer who gained magic through a ring that belonged to Eilonwy’s family, and calls him out for using something that doesn’t belong to him…but later on Taran doesn’t hesitate in using said magic as a bargaining chip for his own profit. Because clearly it’s not theft if you’re planning to marry the woman you’re talking about.

I mean, I know it’s a book from the sixties and it’s probably not the worst thing written in that decade, but that doesn’t make the thing any more palatable to me, a reader from 2016.

 

 

Honestly, this kind of cements the disappointment from last book—where the first two installments were interesting and presented messages that I find honestly underrated in the world of fantasy where everyone and their mother comes from a royal family, the third and fourth book of the series were honestly disappointing in that respect.

 

It’s not quite as bad as the previous installment but that doesn’t make it much better. Two stars only.