Just as love can make people dumb, "The Castle of Llyr" proves that love can also make an entire plot stupid. In this filler installment billed as Princess Eilonwy's coming-of-age story, the girl of the red-gold hair disappears for the majority of the novel only to reappear in the end as a damsel in distress. The true focus of the story are Taran's FEELINGS for Elionwy, not the actual girl in question.

But wait, if that wasn't irksome enough, Eilonwy also looses much of her sense of agency to aide a lazy plot device, because heaven forbid someone other than Taran has a meaningful growth arc. Then the ending, while intended to be an emotional climax highlighting the importance of personal sacrifice, was an underwhelming mess.

This is all a shame, because I liked this book well enough as a kid. The only thing that saves this volume from a one star rating is the over-sized cat Llyan. Her annoyance with the humans was truly warranted; may she hear all the bard music she wants.