While flipping through this week's TIME magazine, I ran across an obituary that surprised me and made me sad. Turns out Lloyd Alexander, writer of my third favorite fantasy series, passed away on May 17. Not sure how I missed it, but it makes me sad nonetheless.

I saw The Black Cauldron movie sometime while growing up: probably back in elementary school when they showed Disney movies in the "little theater." I'm not sure how I came across the series of books that the movie was based on. It happened in Fort Worth, of this I am sure. I remember buying a good number of the five book Prydain series at Half-Price Books. The first three books were pretty good. The fourth book, Taran Wanderer totally blew me away: the story of an assistant pig-keeper and his many friends as they fight evil and learn about the world around them. In that fourth book, Taran learns an awful lot about himself in an amazing way. The last book, The High King crescendoed on a Return of the King level. In fact, in my humble opinion, the Prydain series is the perfect link between The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings. The humor is there. The innocence is there. And the sadness of a world passing is there as well.

I do not want to do Lloyd any disservice by saying that his work is in any way inferior to Tolkien or Lewis. His recasting of Welsh myth is equally brilliant and amazingly accessible to the young reader (and to to not-so-young adult reader like me. I'm sad to see him gone. And I'm sad it took me more than a week to find out.