Lloyd Alexander Book Review Redux

I read another Lloyd Alexander book today and another couple thoughts about them struck me forcibly enough that I regret not mentioning them the first time around.
He points the moral too obviously and really only tells one story. He tells the story of a young man of noble birth (whether cognizant of it or not) who is sent out into the world by a mysterious person to try and accomplish a difficult task, but, just as important, he learns lessons about how to live a virtuous life, what is most important and how to be a better person. Along the way he accumulates a group of friends of various talents (which are again similar from book to book) and finds a strong-willed girl (see the first review) with which to fall in love. Taran does these things in a Welsh setting. Lucian does them in a Greek setting. Prince Jen is Chinese, but otherwise the same. And the book I just read, The Iron Ring, is exactly the same but in the Indian sub-continent. I'd be willing to bet that he followed the same formula for a number of other cultures and locations as well.

In all of these the reader is firmly beaten over the head with the ideas and morals that Alexander has. Which aren't too bad, really, it's just a shame that he is only a shade away from Aesop in how clear he feels he has to make them.

On the other hand, who am I to criticise the sameness of his books? He was a remarkably successful children's novelist and sold a bunch of books. The Prydain series was, for all its flaws, still an excellent set of books almost on a par with the Narnia Chronicles. But I think the lack of imagination in characterization and the too-obvious moralizing keeps these books from being in the front rank of children's literature.