This is the fourth of Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain, and if you’d
asked me some months ago, before I started reading them to David, I’d
have told you it was my favorite. It might still be…but I was
surprised to discover that it’s not the book I thought it was.

Or, rather, it is…but the events that I remember and that made the book
special for me and that I thought filled the whole book are actually all
jammed into the last thirty or forty pages.

Anyway, this is the book where Taran, through self-sacrifice and
hard work, finally becomes a man. This is the book where he discovers
his limits–which are wider than he thinks in some places and which pinch
unexpectedly in others–and makes his peace with himself. He becomes a
man who can see what needs doing, and will do it, as best he can; who
does not make excuses; who is brave, honest, and skilled, all three. Not
a bad package, I think.