I love books with muskets.
If you like to take the sum total of creation, sort it on an arbitrarily value, and slice a line through it at an arbitrary point-and who doesn't-here's one for you. There are two kinds of creating people in the world. Steven Spielberg, and Michael Curtiz.
Who is Michael Curtiz, I hear you those of you who refuse to click links asking. An Oscar-winning director, best known for a little film Casablanca. Yes, that Casablanca. One of the greatest films of all times, according to dozens of lists. And you've never heard his name. Spielberg, on the other hand? According to IMDb, he's directed a third the movies of Curtiz. He's won two Oscars for directing, for Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan, both of which are good films, but neither of which are ever put on the same list as Casablanca (unless it's a list of films that takes place during World War II (and only if said list doesn't have an semi-arbitrary sub-list)). But you've heard of him. because, while his individual films are not (officially) at the level of Casablanca, he's just been prolific enough, and successful enough in his prolificacy, to command a far greater name recognition.
The crux of all this is, there are some people who are destined to live in their own shadows: once they have one Great Work, their names will never be spoken without being connected to one specific work. And some people whose name outshines that of their own creations
I suspect, if Lloyd Alexander1's name is remembered at all in thirty years (or even remembered today), he'll be in the first set, for the Prydain Chronicles. Which is sensible, but a shame, because he's written enough books, many of them also excellent, which should pull him out of the shadow of The High King et al. Indeed, while it is Right and Proper that Prydain be his best known creation, I'd have to say (having read both sereis over the past week or so) that, in tone and setting, Prydain comes a close second to Westmark.
1. Yes, once I finish this, I'm done with Lloyd Alexander for the summer. Maybe.
You haven't heard of Westmark, The Kestrel, and The Beggar Queen, of course. It's not really as well known, certainly not as seminal. Heck, it starts remarkably similarly to half a dozen other Alexander novels, or novels by dozens of other authors: a person flees from their home, encounters interesting companions, and has Adventures. There, I've just described every novel ever written. The difference, well one of the main differences, between this and, say, The Book of Three, is the hero, Theo the printer's devil. Because, unlike...
Let me just give you the beginning to Westmark; this happens only twenty pages in, so it's hardly a spoiler. Theo works with a printer. Business is scarce, for various reasons, and so they jump at the chance to do some very last-minute pamphlets for a clear mounteback. The only problem is that they don't have the opportunity to get the stamps they'd need for an official printing; while they could have gotten them tomorrow, before the pamphlets were needed, they are interrupted by soldiers who, seeing that the printer is engaged in illicit typesetting, set about taking down the press. The printer attempts to stop them, one officer pulls out a pistol, and Theo knocks him out (he believes, at first, that he's killed him) and runs for his life. All quite basic, except for one thing which Theo is forced to admit to himself.
For a brief moment, Theo wanted to kill him. That impulse, shocking despite, or perhaps because of the number of novels where characters don't give it a second thought, is the thought which is carried throughout the rest of the series. Taran, for all his good qualities, never seems unwilling to accept bloodshed as the price that must be paid; he, unlike Theo, never remarks in response to the omelette cliché that "men aren't eggs". But even as he is repulsed, he finds himself pushed closer, and past, the murderer he'd feared himself to be at the story's open. And Alexander's treatment of the question is never as simplistic as one might expect for a children's series. When he embraces it, you shudder, but at the same time you understand that, in a sense, maybe what he does needed to be done. Which makes you shudder all the more
The other theme which dominates the narrative is something which appeals to my interest even more. Driven by Florian, a student in the mode of Enjolras of Les Misérables, and his "Children", it chronicles the slow swelling of political and philosophical tides that presage the rise of democracy. Only not as dry as that. Reading it makes me certain Lloyd Alexander read Les Mis, because there are too many parallels (especially in The Beggar Queen). Again, the swiftness of the rise of democracy may seem fast: a belief in the virtue of monarchy and aristocracy would probably be deeper rooted than our modern minds likes to admit. But we never doubt the ability of democratic ideals, especially in times of such chaos, to produce a sea-change in the minds of the populace.
And that's what you want, isn't it? A novelist must give you a pack of lies, and make you believe every word. For in that pack of lies, somewhere, lies the truth.
A shame that you went and destroyed the door.