Product Description

Enthralling sequel to The Weirdstone of Brisingamen It is the Eve of Gomrath -- the night of the year when the Old Magic is aroused. Had Colin and Susan known this, they would never have lighted a fire on the Beacon, thereby releasing the uncontrollable ferocity of the Wild Hunt. Soon they are inextricably caught up in the struggle between their friend, the Wizard Cadellin, and the evil Morrigan. The strength of their courage will determine whether or not they survive the awaiting ordeal!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1321431 in Books
• Published on: 2002-09-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Review
Critical acclaim from 1963: "It is not only powerful but remarkably sophisticated." The Guardian "Weird and marvellously evocative tale of Celtic mysteries, elves, spirits and strange presences felt, mingled to make high adventure for Colin and Susan -- and peril for Susan. It is a timeless story, full of wonder and magic, terror and beauty. A fine author indeed, and perhaps one of a new generation of classics." Books and Bookmen

About the Author
Alan Garner was born and still lives in Cheshire, an area which has had a profound effect on his writing and provided the seed of many ideas worked out in his books. His fourth book, 'The Owl Service' brought Alan Garner to everyone's attention. It won two important literary prizes -- The Guardian Award and the Carnegie Medal -- and was made into a serial by Granada Television. It has established itself as a classic and Alan Garner as a writer of great distinction.

Customer Reviews

"Moon" shines
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 Suns and Moons of Gomrath
'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.

Lord of the Rings Lite
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.