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

Product Information

Gillies, Carolyn (1975). "Possession and Structure in the Novels of Alan Garner". Children's Literature in Education. 6 (3): 107–117. doi: 10.1007/BF01263341. S2CID 144402971.

If The Weirdstone (Garner's first novel) leans a little 3-, this leans 3.5 or maybe a little more. Weirdstone has a lot of unfortunate-nesses like a goblin named Slinkveal, the general batch of bad guys called the morthbrood, and of course the main villain, Grimnir. The best decision in Weirdstone is to make the tunnel scary because spelunking is terrifying, not because of lurking fell beasts. Gomrath gets more complicated, the kids, especially Susan, develop as characters, and so does the mythology. I was interested to learn, upon Googling, that the wizard story is real. That is, Alderley is an actual place, it has an ancient legend of a wizard stopping a farmer from Mobberley (seriously, where do the English get these names), buying his horse, showing him the sleeping riders, etc. Garner grew up on the Edge, and so I can see him having played with his friends or maybe alone, making up some of these stories. You can also see how these stories start to get conflated. Perhaps the sleeping knights were a separate story from King Arthur, originally.

Menu

Garner provides a sidelight on his authorial approach by including an appendix of books which inspired him, along with a brief discussion of his approach to mythology. A six-part radio adaptation by Nan MacDonald was broadcast on the BBC Home Service in 1963. [27] The cast included John Thornley as Colin, Margaret Dew as Susan, Alison Bayley as Selina Place, Geoffrey Banks as Cadellin the Wizard, Brian Trueman as Fenodyree, John Blain as Police Sergeant, Ronald Harvi as Durathror, and George Hagan as Narrator. Light wendfire on the mound on the Moon of Gomrath, and these tropes may be freed to walk the Earth:

What is more interesting to me is whether Garner invested more of himself in either one or other sibling. That he has had deep emotional attachments to protagonists as well as place is clear from his breakdown following The Owl Service, a breakdown which was detailed in a talk he gave to a science fiction convention and which was later republished in The Voice that Thunders. It is the nature of that investment that is key to understanding the Weirdstone trilogy, and that key is I suspect only to be revealed in Boneland, the final part of the trilogy, which was published nearly half a century after The Moon of Gomrath. Treacle Walker was shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize, making Garner the oldest writer nominated at the time. [54] 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 ] Upon publication it was a critical success, [9] [18] but later Garner had begun to find fault, referring to it in a 1968 interview as "a fairly bad book" and in 1970 as "one of the worst books published in the last twenty years... technically... inept". [2] Literary critics [ edit ]

Durathror – Prince of the Huldrafolk, and Fenodyree's cousin, whose pride lies in his strength in battle. Hans Christian Andersen Awards". International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY). Retrieved 29 July 2013.

Garden of Evil: the rampant, fast-growing rhododendron infestation at Errwood Hall, an imported foreign flower that has few predators, is steadily strangling all plant life other than itself, and among which nothing else can grow. Colin and Susan both get entangled in its spiny, thorny, runners. The novel Treacle Walker was published in October 2021 and nominated to the shortlist for the 2022 Booker Prize. [30] Personal life [ edit ] Before writing Elidor, Garner had seen a dinner service set which could be arranged to make pictures of either flowers or owls. Inspired by this design, he produced his fourth novel, The Owl Service. [22] The story, which was heavily influenced by the Medieval Welsh tale of Math fab Mathonwy from the Mabinogion, [22] was critically acclaimed, winning both the Carnegie Medal and Guardian Children's Fiction Prize. [22] It also sparked discussions among critics as to whether Garner should properly be considered a children's writer, given that this book in particular was deemed equally suitable for an adult readership. [22] Coming to an end of a book can be a dark time for Garner, but he is upbeat today, even though he is almost sure that Boneland will be his last work. "I can't imagine, being realistic, that at the age of 77, and taking about a decade to write a book even when I've got an idea – which I haven't got at the moment – that it wouldn't be foolish to engage in it," he says. "I don't think I've got the time or the energy to undergo things like Strandloper, Thursbitch and Boneland."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. 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 2012, he finally published a third book in the Weirdstone trilogy. Susan told her story. She spoke hesitantly, as though trying to describe something to herself as much as to anyone else. As they went deeper the blue light grew pale and strong, and by this the children knew that they were nearing the Cave of the Sleepers, for whose sake the old dwarf-mine of Fundindelve had been charged with the greatest magic of an age, and its guardian was Cadellin Silverbrow. Here in this cave, waiting through the centuries for the day when Cadellin should rouse him from his enchanted sleep to fight the last battle of the world, lay a king, surrounded by his knights, each with his milk-white mare. At the climax of the story a great battle takes place on a hill near Alderley during which the children and their companions make a desperate last stand to protect the Weirdstone. However the enemy forces prove too strong and Durathror is mortally wounded. Grimnir takes the Weirdstone for himself and, in the ensuing chaos, Nastrond sends the great wolf Fenrir (in some editions Managarm) to destroy his enemies. As the remaining companions begin to despair, Cadellin appears and slays Grimnir, whom he reveals to be his own brother and who in the final moment accepts defeat and drops the stone into Cadellin's hand. The Morrigan flees in terror while Cadellin uses the power of the Weirdstone to subdue once again the forces of darkness.

Academic specialist in children's literature Maria Nikolajeva characterised Red Shift as "a difficult book" for an unprepared reader, identifying its main themes as those of "loneliness and failure to communicate". [25] Ultimately, she thought that repeated re-readings of the novel bring about the realisation that "it is a perfectly realistic story with much more depth and psychologically more credible than the most so-called "realistic" juvenile novels." [26] The Stone Book series and folkloric collections: 1974–94 [ edit ] 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 ]The Moon of Gomrath is a fantasy story by the author Alan Garner, published in 1963. It is the sequel to The Weirdstone of Brisingamen. 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. Butler, Charles (2006). Four British Fantasists: Place and Culture in the Children's Fantasies of Penelope Lively, Alan Garner, Diana Wynne Jones, and Susan Cooper. Lanham MD: Scarecrow. ISBN 978-0-8108-5242-6. She has ridden with the Shining Ones, the Daughters of the Moon, and they came with her from behind the north wind. Now she is here. But the Shining Ones did not leave Susan of choice, for through her they may wake their power in the world – the Old Magic, which has long been gone from here. It is a magic beyond our guidance: it is magic of the heart, not of the head: it can be felt, but not known: and in that I see no good. She was saved, and is protected, only by the Mark of Fohla – her blessing and her curse. For it guards her against the evil that would crush her, and it leads her ever further from the ways of human life. The more she wears it, the more need there is to do so. And it is too late now to take it off.