Customer Reviews

Moon of Gomrath

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Perhaps the biggest problem with Alan Garner's Alderly tales is that there are only two. Like the book before it, "The Moon of Gomrath" takes the ingredients of stereotypical fantasy, and gives them a slight twist. The result is a moonlit, mythical adventure with a rare power.

While walking in the woods, Colin and Susan encounter an elf and a dwarf, near where Cadellin the wizard guards the sleeping knights. They learn that the lios-alfar (elves) are migrating to Alderly, because a mysterious force is causing some of them to vanish. Unfortunately, proximity to humans' pollution is causing the "smoke sickness" in the elves, and Uthecar asks that Susan lend him the bracelet that Angharad Goldenhand gave her.

But Susan is suddenly kidnapped by an evil force, and reappears quiet and strange. She has been taken over by the malevolent Brollachan. The dwarves and Cadellin are able to help Colin restore her to normality -- but evil is still stirring in the form of the Morrigan and her sinister cohorts. And when Susan and Colin light a fire to keep warm on a hill, they inadvertantly set off the band of magical horsemen, the Wild Hunt...

"The Moon of Gomrath" is less like a real sequel, and more like "Part Two" of prior novel "The Weirdstone of Brisingamen," with the same mythical storylines and quiet poetry of Garner's unique style. But this time around, warring wizards and goblins take a backseat to elves and ancient warriors straight out of old Celtic myth.

Garner's writing remains poignant and rather saddening -- the elves are sickening, Susan is forever changed by the golden bracelet and her possession, and the industrial world is slowly driving away past magic. Garner tells us that someone who uses a magical horn "may not know peace again, not in the sun's circle or in the darkling of the world."

Susan and Colin fulfil the archetype of plucky-British-kids-on-magical-vacation quite well. Although Susan slowly transcends that over the course of the book, Colin doesn't change much. Cadellin doesn't appear much, but his absence is made up for by the lios-alfar, an evil dwarf, and the malevolent witch Morrigan.

The mythical beauty of "The Moon of Gomrath" is only really comparable to "The Weirdstone of Brisingamen," its predecessor. Magical, mythical, and thoroughly entrancing.

'The Moon of Gomrath' is the wild magical sequel to 'The Weirdstone of Brisingamen', set in Alderley Edge in Cheshire of the present day but harking back to the days of Middlearth. Both these stories have a very Tolkienish way about them, it is an interesting exercise to compare and contrast the characters as they are introduced. It is a pity that Garner's books, faring less well than 'The Hobbit', dropped off the literary radar in the 1980's, but with the benefit of Potter power they are now back in style with new artwork on the cover.

Garner's special art is to take a basic swords-and-sorcery story and elevate it into a poetry-and-powers myth with gritty heroes and terrifying villains who hard to defeat and not always easy to spot. This story of Colin and Susan's second adventure is aimed at a slightly older audience than the Weirdstone, has Susan in the lead role, and has more depth and menace along with some sly humour. The Morrigan is back, not yet at the height of her powers, but ready for revenge. The elves are suffering and dying from the pollution caused by Man: they must retreat to cleaner, remoter places. The battles in magic and swordplay are more deadly and more personal and more realistic. The havoc and hard pace of war are felt in the prose, which is breathless and a little wild itself. The wizard Cadellin takes more of a back seat in this adventure but he does explain (in chapter four) why the coming of the 'Age of Reason' and industrialism was more of a coming of the age of Materialism and a retreat from Reason. Hence the great rift between our Man's world of material values, and the worlds of magic and the life of the spiritual values.

Now as every parent knows, children's books have the power of forming the child's mind. (True even in the age of film and video, as books are both more personal and make mind-expanding demands on the imagination. Films just fill up whatever space is in your head, they do not create it. Books are not just good for you, they are more fun.) So with magical adventures being very much back in style now is a good time to get the various authors into some sort of order. So, without going back to the ancient Greeks, where does Alan Garner fit in? We can easily go back a century or so: F. Anstey (Vice Versa), George MacDonald (Princess and Curdie stories), and E. Nesbit (House of Arden, etc), Tolkien (Hobbit, Farmer Giles of Ham), C.S. Lewis (Narnia, the land of youth), Ursula K. LeGuin (Earthsea), and Alan Garner. And, as Rowling's ghost Peeves puts it, 'Wee Potty Potter', brings us up to date.

So there are two main routes to magic. Anstey, MacDonald, Nesbit, Garner, and Rowling write a story that exercises magic in this world, and the two things collide with exciting degrees of chaos and depth. The results are serious or hilarious, or both. Garner manages to interface the two worlds with superior art. But a higher priced ticket will take you to a whole new world. Tolkien, Lewis, and LeGuin create whole worlds of their own and people it with new peoples - a fully magical world. The magic is integrated, truly part of the fabric of that world, not just added to make it fizz. One you are in, you belong there for a while. You return and your own world is now a little more magical. The whole range of literary forms is now possible, even super-possible as we no longer rely on supposed 'realism' to make the effects. They go beyond just making a magical talisman or two (some brilliantly done, others less so), and seeing 'what happens'. They make new countries and skies, new kingdoms and peoples, new languages and rules. Ultimately they are the suns and the others are the moons.

"The Moon of Gomrath" is another great fantastical tale - perfect for young teens and adults alike! I agree with one of the other reviewers that the only problem with this series is that there are only 2 books in it - as I would glady devour several more!

This is only the second book of this genre that I've read - which I would categorize as "fantasy". I never thought I would enjoy such books, but after these 2 by Alan Garner, I realize that I was wrong.

"The Moon of Gomrath" continues the story of Susan & Colin's journeys through a paralell world of magic (their journeys begin in the first book titled "The Weirdstone of Brisingamen").

Once again they are inadvertantly pulled into a fight between good & evil - one that will have major consequences for both the magical world, and the one they actually live in.

The old-world language, coupled with the amazingly vivid details, work together to pull the reader in, and keep you turning pages to the end.

A nice addition to this book was a note at the end which explained where the author got his ideas from, and the fact that all of the geographical areas used in this book (with the exception of just one) actually exist.

Overall, I would highly recommend this book for anyone who enjoys using their imagination - you won't get bored with this one!

I read The Moon of Gomrath when it first came out, and I was 9 or 10. It was the first fantasy novel I had ever read and I really enjoyed it. I decided 40 years later to give it another go, and I was disappointed. In the meantime I've read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and they are so much better than The Weirdstone and The Moon of Gomrath that the Garner
books suffer by comparison. Garner is using the same British and Celtic ancient legends that Tolkien did, and Garner's using the same Anglo Saxon naming conventions, so Garner's books come off sounding like ripoffs of Tolkien's books.

Garner's 2 books are probably good for 8-13 year olds, who may be too young yet for Tolkien's works, but as an adult, I found them disappointing. The most annoying part was that Garner uses a lot of pronouns in sentences where 2 characters are mentioned, so you never know who "he" or "they" refer to. The characters change their minds too often, and flipflop on what they are going to do. The children want into Fundindelve, and then when they're in, they want out. They leave the house on their own at all hours of the night and run around dangerous quarries and mines. The children can run miles in the night along unknown roads, and yet the same path might take adults days during good light. Susan doesn't wear a watch, but she has no problem with 2 bracelets. The maps are supposed to be of real places, but the same landmarks appear at different places on different maps, and the scale is unknown. The only character that rings true is Gowther, and at the end of "Moon" Garner mentions that he was copied from a real life person. The other characters don't seem to talk or act the way a real person would. I realize Turner was trying to make it seem as though they used older language, and that doesn't bother me. It's that what they say didn't make sense. The climax of both books is very abrupt. The stories just suddenly end. Turner never mentions how old the children are, or even which one is the oldest, but they don't seem to respect any authority and they do what they please. They try to find things without a clue as to where to even look. I just find this too unbelievable. I will not be reading any more of Garner's books.