Synopsis: From the first page of the Ballantine first edition: "Welsh Mythology - and the long-neglected Books of the Mabinogi - When Evangeline Walton's The Island of the Mighty first appeared, it was greeted by reviewers all over the country with almost ecstatic acclaim. The Times described it as "a brilliant and diverting work of fiction that Arthur Machen would read with pleasure and praise; and one that might call forth the envy of James Branch Cabell..." Drawn from the Second Book of the Mabinogi, The Children of Llyr is a part of the first great work. In stark, gaunt prose, it chronicles the years of Bran the Blessed - he who was so vast a man that no house could hold him not ship bear his bulk - and of the tale of his beloved sister Branwen, his brother Manawyddan, and of his half-brothers Nissyen and the ghastly Evnissyen. It is a tale of change and storm, of love beyond death, of high courage, of the end of an era - and the beginning of another."