Customer Reviews

The Hounds of the Morrigan

5 star:		(58)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I first read The Hounds Of The Morrigan in elementary school. Recently while at the library, it caught my eye again, almost like Pidge in the story. This is a wonderful novel - the characters are as alive as any people I've met, the setting is amazing, and, especially for a childrens book, the plots and subplots are intricate and complex. But fascinating - it's almost hypnotic - this is the only book I have ever seriously not been physically able to put down while reading it. Anybody looking for (I mean anybody, from 10 to much older) a really good fantasy and the quest you wished for devoutly as a child, a crash course in Irish mythology, and the kind of book will probably never come along again - read this book. It's well worth it. I wish Pat O'Shea would write another book like this - perhaps someday she will. Until then, read this one and hope. Come on, Pidge and Briget are waiting!

This is a masterpiece.
Look, I can rave about as many books as I read (and I will) but in the end, this book is my very favourite. It took ten years to write and is, quite frankly, brilliant.
It has (almost) everything that recommends a book to me. Warm, endearing protagonists (Pidge and Brigit are two of the most delightful heroes to grace children's literature), truly threatening bad guys, humour, suspense, scary bits, happy bits, bits that make your scalp tingle, and bits that make your heart sing. It's about friendship, and love, and courage, and good versus evil. It's about ordinary people doing extraordinary things. It's ostensibly a children's story, but is strengthened by some challenging concepts. Its length, which would normally be limiting, merely prolongs the absolute delight to be found in this book. The plot is engrossing, although slow moving to start off with and references to Irish mythology lend an air of familiarity to the story.
The true strength of the book though, lies in its characters. Everyone in this book has a story. Every character is fully dimensional. You can picture Puddeneen having his life made cheerfully miserable by Miss Fancy just as strongly as you can picture Brigit growing into a vibrant, intelligent young woman and Puddeneen is a talking frog. That is how well O'Shea does her job.
I could never understand why 'His Dark Materials' etc were any more popular than this truly marvellous book. I recommend it above all others. It's beautiful.

Some books stretch the bounds of credulity with unexplained magical feats, but with this book I just didn't care; it makes no pretensions to be other than what it is - a children's fairy story, where anything can and does happen; monsters, giants, shapeshifters, witches, magic, talking animals - this book has the lot. It made me want to read it out loud to my grand-daughter, if it wasn't so long! It has that (now) outdated 'story-book' delivery to it that is somehow very appropriate to the plot and characters; short, descriptive sentences without waffle or padding convey the gist of the story using exactly the right words and phraseology - no wading through paragraphs of tortuous description. Brigit steals the show with her feisty 'I can do anything and I'm not afraid of YOU' attitude and the other characterisations are so good, you can 'see' each one in your mind's eye. Ideal material for a film, but I fear that Terry Gilliam is the only one good enough to do it justice. I loved it - read it with a child's open mind and you will too - a real joy!

I found this book in my local library when I was eleven. It stayed with me for years, in the back of my brain. Finally, when I was eighteen, my friend surprised me with a hardcover version. It was even more incredible the second time around. I can't believe that this book has been such a whisper in the world of literature, let alone "young adult fantasy". O'Shea does with this masterpiece what most artists and writers could only dream of doing. Furthermore, she saves old Ireland with every heart she captures between the pages of this book. I only wish Columbus, Ohio had a writer to pull the stories up from under the asphalt the way O'Shea did with her modern town. Stories like this are what will save us.

This book became one of my ten "comfort books"...the ones I look for in hardcover, so they don't break or rip every time I move. They're the ones that follow me everywhere I go. "Hounds" was enchanting the first time I read it, and was just as wonderful the 40th (really!) time. I credit this book with sparking my interest in things Celtic. I would love to read anything else by Pat O'Shea, but this seems to be her tour-de-force...she has a small children's book out. It, too, is lovely, but it's nothing like this!

For the English Majors out there...even more so than the main characters, watch the bit parts. Every chapter is filled with people and animals who have their own purposes in the story, and each one is developed to the point that you just KNOW they have lives outside the bounds of their small, sometimes one-line parts...Highly recommended.

With the surge of popularity for fantasy based kid's books (all thanks, in part, to that marvelous Harry O'Potter) there has been a glut on the market. Too many poorly written and poorly conceived works of children's literature are out there. It is the job of conscientious librarians, parents, and booksellers to weed through the mire and muck and find the rare true treasures out there. I'd been wading through muck for quite some time when it occurred to me that now was perhaps the best time to turn my attention to that hardly recognized classic, "The Hounds of the Morrigan". Originally published in 1985, the book is one of the purest fantasy novels ever written with children in mind. Combining old school fantasy elements with undiluted Irish myth and mythology, children in love with talking animals and evil witches need look no further than Pat O'Shea's riveting first novel.

Pidge doesn't mean to unleash an evil serpent upon the world but that's just the way things go sometimes. After having purchased an old manuscript containing a trapped creature of evil within its pages, Pidge finds himself in the center of a great grand adventure. It seems that the evil Morrigan, a kind of malevolent goddess split into three bodies, wishes to devour the serpent Olc-Glass and add its power to her own. The only means of defeating her in this effort lie in finding a drop of the Morrigan's blood that will destroy both the serpent and her plans. With his five year old sister Brigit in tow, ten year old Pidge sets out to find the pebble of blood and escape the Morrigan's hounds that follow him at every turn.

High fantasy has never been so epic. Author Pat O'Shea is extraordinarily gifted as she describes the wonders and horrors that confront the siblings at every turn. The book slips effortlessly between various Irish myths (some involving the great warrior Cuchulain, some ancient Druids, and some the Seven Maines). Prepare to brush up on your Gaelic as you find yourself skimming such names as Tir-na-nOg, Millskuhuch, and Baile-na-gCeard. What makes the book so readable, however, is the writing itself. Adventures and unexpected delights await Pidge and the very five year old Brigit at every turn. Yet even the most horrible moments in this tale are tempered by the knowledge that things will turn out all right in the end. I originally read this tale years and years ago and its funny to find the elements that have stuck with me since then. I could remember the fox Coo Roo and his love of sausages and I remembered the floating disgusting fingerprint of the Morrigan. Things I forgot and read with anewed pleasure included the ridiculous and wonderful frog Puddeneen Whelan and the great love of his life Miss Fancy Finnerty. I think what really makes "The Hounds" stand out as a fantasy novel, in addition to its originality and historical elements, is its humor. Mind you, there are plenty of jokes that American kids simply will NOT get. If you thought the original editions of Harry Potter were too oblique for the minds of little ones then you obviously should avoid this book as well. Which is a great pity since the jokes that I DID get were fabulous. As a child I took Scottish Highland dancing, and I was quite adept at the Highland Fling. Imagine my amusement, then, when a small spider in this book announces that it will now dance the Fly Land Hing. The book's rife with jokes of that nature. Just to warn you.

Honestly, this is probably the best Irish fantasy book for children ever written. Hands down. I mean, what other book so deftly combines elements of the goddess Kali with the Three Graces to deliver a breathtakingly evil villainess? Some people will raise the hue and cry bloody murder at the fact that the Morrigan is seen as all evil in this tale. To those who dislike this interpretation of the ancient goddess, chill out. Seriously. Pat O'Shea has merely taken a fable and adapted it to her delightful children's book. If you want a story about the "true" Morrigan, (whatever that may mean) search elsewhere. This book has plenty to recommend it. I mean, where else do siblings act as tenderly and compassionately towards one another as Pidge and Brigit do? And let me tell you, it is a great relief to root for characters that are as likable and complex and these delightful two. Some kids may be daunted at the 675 page length of this novel. Others will blow through it like it was the Sunday Times (especially those who've already done so with the aforementioned Mr. Potter). With a helpful Glossary of Terms and pronunciation at the back and an acknowledgement section that gives some superb sources, this tale has it all. I tell you now that you cannot claim to know anything about the depths of fantasy until you have read this book. It's a delightful romp that millions have enjoyed and millions more need to know about. Snap it up.

I read this book for the first time when I was in the 6th grade and tried to pick out the thickest book in my elementary school library. I finished it in 3 days and then kept it for the full 4 weeks I was allowed (with 1 renewal) in order to read it 3 more times. Since then, I have compared every other book I've ever read to this in terms of sheer imagination and enchantment. I haven't found another book that comes even close (though Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials series is pretty good). In addition, O'Shea draws heavily from real Celtic mythology - an intricate, beautiful, and frequently unknown history. Now that I teach middle school-aged children myself, I recommend this book to every bookworm child I encounter. The librarian at my school ordered 2 copies just so I could have one to read and one for kids to check out! The Hounds... is on my Top 10 of all time list alongside Hemingway, Faulkner, and Salinger.

This is a very original, imaginative and humorous good-vs.-evil fantasy in which the weak and humble prevail over the strong and proud. Two Irish children, Pidge, 10, and Brigit, 5, are sent by the Dagda, the Good God, on a quest into Faerie to defeat the wicked Morrigan, the threefold goddess of death and destruction. They are pursued by the Morrigan's menacing but inept hounds and aided by a charming, and quite comical, assortment of talking animals: the frog Puddeneen, an earwig who helps the children escape the evil goddess' illusory castle, a delightful spider family, a fox called Cooroo, and more. Also assisting Pidge and Brigit are such mythical figures as Cuchulain, Queen Maeve, the druid Cathbad, and Brigit (goddess of the hearth) and Angus Og (god of love). "The Hounds of the Morrigan" is an enchanting story that celebrates the goodness of creation and makes the reader see magic and miraculousness in the ordinary, everyday world.

This is not just an uncommon book; it is a rare book.

First of all, let's get this straight. If you're here for a sharp plotline, a book that marches to the end page in a straight, severe, solid sort of line, you will be sorely disappointed. This book's aim is not to give you "the best ending," but "the best journey." Furthermore, this book is not an intellectual's piece of modern fantasy. It's a simply-written fairytale... albeit one that hides a complex heart.

Indeed, this book is not your typical read. It is a rambling, cheery fairytale -- a fairytale in the most conservative sense of the word. I can entirely imagine a saucy Irish grandmother sitting by a fireplace with her slack-jawed, saucer-eyed grandchildren staring up at her as she tells them these fairytales, each night outdoing the story (i.e., chapter) told the night before. This unique approach to storytelling is nothing short of a pure delight.

In any other storyteller's hands, this book would be horribly overwrought and filled with useless fluff. The Hounds of the Morrigan is filled with fluff, all right, but it's the most satisfying, well-crafted fluff I've ever had the honor of reading. Simple words and sentences that shine, easy turns of phrase, beautiful metaphors, and strangely fitting, hilarious invented verbs (like "sniggle") abound. It's easy to read, but it's also very intelligently written -- in some parts, it's almost poetry. There are no useless padded paragraphs here.

If the prose is a character in and of itself, and fun to read for its own sake, it serves to reason that the true characters cannot help but follow suit. Each character is tenderly drawn out -- striking, humorous, and fresh. Villains are truly frightening and appealing at the same time, secondary and tertiary characters are all delightful without fail, and the protagonists are adorable, bright, and lovable. Pidge and Bridget manage to be sweet, good-natured, and cute without swerving into saccharine unbelievability (which I think is a feat in and of itself).

Thanks to the characters and plot, Irish mythology literally pops into life. I knew little to nothing about Irish fairytales before this; Hounds of the Morrigan rectified that situation with aplomb. Wound throughout the narrative are nuggets of wisdom, all effortlessly imparted and actually, well, wise (this is a marvel, really). There is only one exception -- the downright irritating, preachy, and nigh hypocritical CooRoo -- but with so much good in this book, it's an easy slight to forgive.

The best thing about this book is most certainly the humor. I do not often laugh aloud when I read books; I laughed aloud when I read this one. If it isn't a frog who looks as sad as a "soggy bun," it's a bored goddess teaching rats to cheat at poker.

The second-best thing about this book is the good-natured, simple "pureheartedness" of it. It's pure optimism in book form. Good is good, bad is bad -- and the bad is not the neutered, limping sort so often presented in children's books. The Morrigan is an unapologetically wicked, despicable creature. The result is that when the children are rescued from her horrible clutches, relief and joy swells up in a palpable wave. In short, this read is remarkably rewarding.

By the time this book ended, I was sorry to see it do so. By the same token, it left me with a warm, glowing exhilaration -- like I had just drunk a big cup of spring sunshine mixed up with a sweet flower-scented breeze. For lack of a better way to put it, this book just seems happy to be alive -- written in a pure wave of joy -- and if it were a person it would be the happiest one in the world. Its happiness is infectious. I can't remember the last time I read a book that affected me so strongly in such a positive way.

If you love fairytales, you can't go wrong by reading this book. It's misleading -- nay, ignorant -- to simply tag it as a "children's book". It's easy enough to relate to the smallest child and it's sharp enough to entertain an adult. It's an absolute delight from beginning to end. You will find nothing else remotely like it. Try it. You may be pleasantly surprised.

With all the hype surrounding Harry Potter, I can't believe that this book is not being sold more. PARENTS: FORCE YOUR CHILDREN TO READ THIS BOOK. I grew up on this kind of literature; as a kid I thought this (along with books by Tolkien, Ursula le Guin and Susan Cooper) was a masterpiece.

One of the refreshing things about "The Hounds of the Morrigan" is that it is set in Ireland. I am from Co. Mayo in Ireland and reading about scenes in Co. Galway mean more to me than an endless number of books set in Britain or USA.

This book delivers the Almighty Battle of Good v Evil really well. It might seem like a cliché, but it is well written and humorous in places.

Still, my little brother didn't like it and I've probably hyped it so much anybody reading it will be disappointed, but, God love me, I tried...