In Memoriam
May. 17th, 2007 09:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vcmwI have heard from lots of posts on my friends list that Lloyd Alexander is dead. This is....
very sucky.
This is the guy who wrote the best political fantasy series for kids I ever read when I was little (Westmark, The Kestrel, The Beggar Queen - so good and I have to re-read them about every two years or I get irked - sly and funny and very realistic political stuff full of people who are not who they think they are or who they appear to be, but also managing to have lots of good Prisoner of Zenda style action sequences). Also he wrote The First Two Lives of Lukas-Kasha, which I loved inordinately, and he wrote a great sort of juvenile Girl-Indiana-Jones type action series about a girl named Holly Vesper. And of course, the Prydain chronicles, which are the books you're going to find by him at your local library no matter how tiny. They're sort of a bit Mabinogion based, I think, and have a great female character, Eilonwy.
Anyway, his books were smart and morally complex and very human, and the new ones were good and touching too (which isn't always the case with authors who you loved when you were a kid, so it's worth noting). Any of my college friends who haven't read him should definitely try them - I recommend Westmark, but that's just because it's my personal favorite. See they didn't have those at my library as a kid, but then I went to this library that was in this old gray stone castle-like building where the upstairs and backroom were a strange natural history museum composed mostly of the private collection of one of those guys who collects all sort of stuff (Vermont is full of these places). And there they were, the Westmark books. And then I had to keep nagging my mother to drive me there again and again so I could check them out again...
very sucky.
This is the guy who wrote the best political fantasy series for kids I ever read when I was little (Westmark, The Kestrel, The Beggar Queen - so good and I have to re-read them about every two years or I get irked - sly and funny and very realistic political stuff full of people who are not who they think they are or who they appear to be, but also managing to have lots of good Prisoner of Zenda style action sequences). Also he wrote The First Two Lives of Lukas-Kasha, which I loved inordinately, and he wrote a great sort of juvenile Girl-Indiana-Jones type action series about a girl named Holly Vesper. And of course, the Prydain chronicles, which are the books you're going to find by him at your local library no matter how tiny. They're sort of a bit Mabinogion based, I think, and have a great female character, Eilonwy.
Anyway, his books were smart and morally complex and very human, and the new ones were good and touching too (which isn't always the case with authors who you loved when you were a kid, so it's worth noting). Any of my college friends who haven't read him should definitely try them - I recommend Westmark, but that's just because it's my personal favorite. See they didn't have those at my library as a kid, but then I went to this library that was in this old gray stone castle-like building where the upstairs and backroom were a strange natural history museum composed mostly of the private collection of one of those guys who collects all sort of stuff (Vermont is full of these places). And there they were, the Westmark books. And then I had to keep nagging my mother to drive me there again and again so I could check them out again...
