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Moon of Gomrath: A compelling magical fantasy adventure, the sequel to The Weirdstone of Brisingamen

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Well, she undid her bracelet and slipped it out of mine, and we walked along the beach, and she said her name was Celemon and we were going to Caer Rigor. I didn’t feel there was any need to ask questions: I accepted everything as it came, like you do in a dream. More tangentially, the name Susan ultimately derives from a flower-term variably associated with the lily (death and rebirth) or the lotus (spiritual awakening), and is associated with a Middle Eastern deity of protection and guardianship. During this book Susan symbolically "dies" and sees the afterlife; she is spiritually awakened by her exposure to other realms; and she fights in guardianship of things she loves and protects. It took Garner six years to write his next novel, Red Shift. [23] The book centres on three intertwined love stories, one set in the present, another during the English Civil War, and the third in the second century CE. [24] Philip referred to it as "a complex book but not a complicated one: the bare lines of story and emotion stand clear". [24] Shown Their Work: There is a long postscript/appendix to the novel, in which Garner discusses folklore and mythology and explains the roots of many of the characters and situations in the age-old stories. He is keen to show that none of it is made up, even explaining that the Latin spells are taken from a medieval grimoire but are only partially reproduced, for safety's sake.

Once again, it details the involvement of two children, Colin and Susan, with the world of myth and magic. This time the focus is on the potential of the older, wilder forms of magic and myth cycle to create both creative and destructive forces on the world. That said, The Moon of Gomrath's evocation of a matriarchal Wild Magic pre-dating the masculine wizardly magic of Cadellin and co prefigures multiple examples of children's fiction, from the weird hierarchy of High, Dark, Light and Wild Magics in Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising sequence to Terry Pratchett's treatment of witchcraft in the Tiffany Aching books. Whew. I'm out of breath just writing it all down. The book would have to have been twice as long to have any hope of pulling all of this together in a coherent form, and even then I'm not sure it would have been possible. It's not a bad book, just not nearly the book it could have been with a little discipline applied to it. In a 1989 interview, Garner noted that although writing The Stone Book Quartet had been "exhausting", it had been "the most rewarding of everything" he'd done to date. [3] Philip described the quartet as "a complete command of the material he had been working and reworking since the start of his career". [24]And it's also no coincidence that a turning point in this novel happens on the Eve of Gomrath, a time when beacon fires are lit to mark either the quarter-days (the beginning of February, May, August or November) or the equinoxes and solstices. It's difficult to tell when the action happens -- probably not the dead of winter or the height of summer -- but one of the ancient Celtic quarter-days seems likeliest to me: in any case all are dangerous times of year, moments of transition from one period to another when anything can happen. Alan Garner's The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The Moon of Gomrath are classics of 20th-century children's literature. Tracing the adventures of the children Colin and Susan as they battle the forces of evil and fall into the world of legend, the books led Philip Pullman to describe Garner as "the most important British writer of fantasy since Tolkien". It's startling, then, to learn that the author, nearing the end of The Moon of Gomrath in 1962, was tempted to throw in the towel in disgust. Years and years and a little while later, the sun fell from the sky and I was to resort to listening to audio books whilst walking to and from work - it avoided the unpleasantness of walking into lampposts in the dark whilst trying to read paper books.

Where it's weaker than "Weirdstone" is that it all feels more contrived. Some of the dangers and solutions that face Colin and Susan - especially early on - are the result of unfortunately combining events. For example the Elves ask for something Susan has at the same time as something else happens, and Susan ends up in danger from event two only because she's given the thing in question to the Elves. In "Weirdstone" the coincidences felt like the hand of fate guiding things - in "Moon" it's less so - though by the end you wonder, because it does all wrap up well. It's cetainly not a deal breaker. In 1970 The Weirdstone of Brisingamen was given the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award by the University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Education. [23] The author [ edit ]Garth, John (22 May 2013). "The Storyteller". Oxford Today. Archived from the original on 29 October 2014 . Retrieved 8 November 2014. The summoning of each rider is accompanied by a long description of each one, including armour, weapons and horses. There is also a description of the ride between each barrow, before the next rider is summoned, which became slightly tedious after the first couple of times. Turning away from fantasy as a genre, Garner produced The Stone Book Quartet (1979), a series of four short novellas detailing a day in the life of four generations of his family. He also published a series of British folk tales which he had rewritten in a series of books entitled Alan Garner's Fairy Tales of Gold (1979), Alan Garner's Book of British Fairy Tales (1984) and A Bag of Moonshine (1986). In his subsequent novels, Strandloper (1996) and Thursbitch (2003), he continued writing tales revolving around Cheshire, although without the fantasy elements which had characterised his earlier work. In the fiftieth anniversary edition of The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, published by HarperCollins in 2010, several notable British fantasists praised Garner and his work. Susan Cooper wrote that "The power and range of Alan Garner's astounding talent has grown with every book he's written", and David Almond called him one of Britain's "greatest writers" whose works "really matter". [39] Philip Pullman, the author of the His Dark Materials trilogy, went further:

Reimer, Mavis (1989). "The Family as Mythic Reservoir in Alan Garner's Stone Book Quartet". Children's Literature Association Quarterly. 14 (3): 132–135. doi: 10.1353/chq.0.0786. S2CID 143190112. The novel Treacle Walker was published in October 2021 and nominated to the shortlist for the 2022 Booker Prize. [30] Personal life [ edit ] The biennial Hans Christian Andersen Award conferred by the International Board on Books for Young People is the highest recognition available to a writer or illustrator of children's books. Garner was the sole runner-up for the writing award in 1978. [43] [44] In the 2005 book Horror: Another 100 Best Books, edited by Stephen Jones and Kim Newman, Muriel Gray's article for The Weirdstone of Brisingamen described it with expressions such as "truly gripping," "beautifully crafted" and "a young person's introduction to horror." [ citation needed] Other fantasy writers [ edit ]

Top 100 Fantasy Books Of All Time

Nastrond – The great spirit of darkness who was defeated by the King in Fundindelve, but is ever waiting to return and conquer the mortal world. He is mentioned in the book but never appears firsthand. I've been eye-balling this book on my shelf, wondering if I actually want to read it, and since I've been having a hard time reading anything lately, I naturally thought it was the perfect time to try this. At the very least, I thought, it would be really easy to put the book down if I didn't like it, given my current mood. Except that this was so short and nostalgic, I ended up reading it in a single afternoon.

Garner is indisputably the great originator, the most important British writer of fantasy since Tolkien, and in many respects better than Tolkien, because deeper and more truthful... Any country except Britain would have long ago recognised his importance, and celebrated it with postage stamps and statues and street-names. But that's the way with us: our greatest prophets go unnoticed by the politicians and the owners of media empires. I salute him with the most heartfelt respect and admiration. [40] I have four filing cabinets of correspondence from readers, and over the years the message is clear and unwavering. Readers under the age of eighteen read what I write with more passion, understanding, and clarity of perception than do adults. Adults bog down, claim that I'm difficult, obscurantist, wilful, and sometimes simply trying to confuse. I'm not; I'm just trying to get the simple story simply told... I didn't consciously set out to write for children, but somehow I connect with them. I think that's something to do with my psychopathology, and I'm not equipped to evaluate it." Alan Garner to conclude Weirdstone of Brisingamen trilogy". Alison Flood. The Guardian 15 March 2012. Retrieved 15 March 2012. I re-read this in preparation for Boneland! It was a wonderful re-visiting of a past pleasure. This second book is perhaps the more writerly, edgy (no pun intended) and sophisticated book, but I have to say the first book still stands out for its unbelievably gripping underground scenes and great storytelling. As for Boneland.... have read it now :-) It goes further again from traditional storytelling and more towards edgy and sophisticated... but it's not a kids' book, so must be looked at differently. I'm inspired to read more Garner fiction for adults now. However "Moon" is not quite as strong a book as it's predecessor - but given the strength of "Weirdstone" that would be a struggle. Taken on it's own merits, however, it is a very strong book.

All Alan Garner Reviews

However, her exposure to other levels of existence has sensitised her to the powers with which she and her brother have been coming to associate and the story takes a new dramatic turn. On walking home across the Edge on dusk, they are inspired to build a fire to keep warm, Susan almost manically so. This fire includes rowan and pine which unintendedly act as a wendfire, which on this night of the year has the power to call ancient spirits from their mounds. Colin and Susan release the Wild Hunt, which return several times during the course of the novel. The Owl Service (1967) won both the Carnegie Medal [48] and the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, [49] For the 70th anniversary of the Carnegie in 2007 it was named one of the top ten Medal-winning works, selected by a panel to compose the ballot for a public election of the all-time favourite. [50] Wakeful are the sons of Ormar! Wakeful Maedoc, Midhir, Mathramil! Ride Einheriar of the Herlathing.’ Why, then, more than 50 years since Weirdstone was published, is he returning to Colin in Boneland, the much-hoped-for, never-expected concluding volume in the Weirdstone trilogy? "I'd no idea that I was going to write the book at first. But I was thinking for a long time about what Colin would have done," says Garner. By then he was "too embroiled" in his adult novel Thursbitch to do anything with it, but in 2003 Thursbitch was done and he "realised that there was, 40 years on, unfinished business".

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