Reviews - The Black Cauldron

604 reviews for:

The Black Cauldron

Lloyd Alexander

4.08 AVERAGE

maria_reads's review against another edition

4.75

adventurous fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

workel3915's review against another edition

4.0

Thank goodness Taran was far less whiny in this book. He can have his star back. Good character development, good foreshadowing, and a good follow-up from book one.

cjoelpace's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous sad fast-paced

deb_weiss's review against another edition

4.0

Love this series! This book deals with some pretty heavy ideas but again, Lloyd Alexander is so magical in how he handles it. The idea of the Black Cauldron and what it's used for, and how a young prince has a black animal/presence harassing him and how it impacts his decisions and how he is redeemed. Again, fantastic stories with levels of wisdom.

Started to listen to the narration provided by my library on Libby and the narrator, James Langton, was great. A good narrator for kids to listen to. Its distantly based on Welsh mythology and so you get great Welsh and Scottish accents.

maludee's review against another edition

5.0

This is a very good children's fantasy novel, even rereading as an adult. It's pretty dark - a lot of death and difficult decisions which stuck with me as a child. It was fun to reread the scenes that I remembered as an adult.

I like how Taran's character has developed since the first book - he's way less annoying in this book but still childish at times, which works really well. I guess this is more common in children's fantasy but I really like how every character in the story serves a purpose. There are villains but almost no character in this story is entirely good or evil, and that moral gray area is what makes this so memorable.