slockmil 's review for:

The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander

2.0

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This is definitely a kids' book. It had been a long time since I read something that was written for such a young audience, and I can't decide if it's just a little too young for me, or if it's really as bland as it seemed. I read it when I was 11, and I remember enjoying the entire series very much, but as an adult it's a little lacking. It was written in the fifties, though, so maybe the reason it suffers is because everything in it has become too engrained in the general fantasy environment to feel fresh. The characters are really flat, and the timeline moves too quickly to really impress upon the reader any passage of real time. Aside from that, not a bad fantasy story. I think it's pretty clear, however, that either Gurgi is a rip-off of Gollum, or Andy Serkis based his version of the character on Gurgi in the LotR movies.