When I was a kid, I just accepted the end of this series as horribly sad but didn't question it. As an adult, I'm pissed. Taran saves the kingdom, he's offered a reward that Dalban knows he won't take, and then what he ends up getting is magic disappearing forever, the Fair Folk leaving forever, his best friends leaving to frolic in the Summer Country for all eternity without him, and the task of building up the land from scratch. And after he eventually dies, people won't even know if he was ever real. I call bullshit. Gwydion is worse than Scumbledore.