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3.8 AVERAGE
3.8 AVERAGE
Read for the first time since it was published in 1972. Much darker than I remembered.
This is an altoghether different proposition from The Weirdstone of Brisingamen. The prose is still bleakly beautiful, but the characters are better developed, more assertive and more independent after their experiences of the last novel, and the story is far more creative. The imagination which created elements like the mara and the lyblacs for the last book is given full rein here. The bodachs, the palugs, above all the Brollachan, are all weird and disturbing creations not found elsewhere in fantasy.
That's not to say there are no influences. There are a few Lord of the Rings echoes still -- the magical McGuffin is now a series of ancient bracelets of lunar power, one of which is revealed to be wielded by the last book's Galadriel substitute -- and the focus on the Morrigan as primary villain recalls CS Lewis' White and Green Witches in the Narnia books. (Rather shockingly for a trilogy whose third volume has just been published, it was less than half a decade between the publication of The Last Battle and that of The Weirdstone of Brisingamen.)
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.
For me there's nothing quite so memorably upsetting as the underground sequences in Weirdstone, but the developing both of Garner's cosmology and of the individual characters of the children (especially Susan, emerging triumphantly from her brother's shadow here) make this the better, more sophisticated book. The hints of Susan's and Colin's futures (we're told casually on the penultimate page that the latter "never found rest again") make the eventual publication of Boneland, if not inevitable, then something many of this book's readers have probably been waiting fifty years for.
That's not to say there are no influences. There are a few Lord of the Rings echoes still -- the magical McGuffin is now a series of ancient bracelets of lunar power, one of which is revealed to be wielded by the last book's Galadriel substitute -- and the focus on the Morrigan as primary villain recalls CS Lewis' White and Green Witches in the Narnia books. (Rather shockingly for a trilogy whose third volume has just been published, it was less than half a decade between the publication of The Last Battle and that of The Weirdstone of Brisingamen.)
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.
For me there's nothing quite so memorably upsetting as the underground sequences in Weirdstone, but the developing both of Garner's cosmology and of the individual characters of the children (especially Susan, emerging triumphantly from her brother's shadow here) make this the better, more sophisticated book. The hints of Susan's and Colin's futures (we're told casually on the penultimate page that the latter "never found rest again") make the eventual publication of Boneland, if not inevitable, then something many of this book's readers have probably been waiting fifty years for.
I always preferred this ever so slightly to Weirdstone, and one of the reasons may be that Colin and Susan have a little more agency in this book, while at the same time having less. More stuff happens to them directly and they do things and even have opinions, but they remain, sadly, ciphers, albeit ciphers on the cusp of change. More than that, though, it was the idea of wild magic, magic that exists purely for its own sake, savage and emotional and dangerous, set against the more ordered, courtly magic of Cadellin, which anticipates a lot of modern fantasy magic with rules and systems, but of course, it is the wild magic that breaks Susan's heart at the end, and leaves the reader haunted too.
Gomrath is a wilder, more formless book as opposed to the rather tidy chase narrative of Weirdstone. The magic comes out of the very landscape, and the danger from the shadowy Brollachain and the shape-changing Morrigan while Colin and Susan's relationship with their allies is more uneasy, and strained to the point of bitterness with the lios-alfar. Futhermore, much is left unsettled at the end, unless I missed some details, with the Morrigan still on the loose and whatever was bothering the lios-alfar unresolved. In retrospect, the set-up for a third volume was always there, but Garner resisted or refused, and many years later we got Boneland, something of an entirely different order.
Gomrath is a wilder, more formless book as opposed to the rather tidy chase narrative of Weirdstone. The magic comes out of the very landscape, and the danger from the shadowy Brollachain and the shape-changing Morrigan while Colin and Susan's relationship with their allies is more uneasy, and strained to the point of bitterness with the lios-alfar. Futhermore, much is left unsettled at the end, unless I missed some details, with the Morrigan still on the loose and whatever was bothering the lios-alfar unresolved. In retrospect, the set-up for a third volume was always there, but Garner resisted or refused, and many years later we got Boneland, something of an entirely different order.