A wonderful read
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I bought this book, for my daughters, after reading the reviews, and read it myself, and was not disappointed !! It is excellent.My daughter is now captured, and a queue of her friends await her finishing the book so they too can join the adventure of Susan and Colin,and their car crash fall into the fight of good and evil.
The book is extremely well written, from start to finish both surprising and enchanting, leaving you will no option but to read The Moon of Gomrath the second book in the series. I would even go so far as to say, Harry Potter you have a rival.(High praise from our household). All in all, an excellent book and a very worthy read.
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Even better than I remembered!
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In my last year at primary school, my teacher used to spend the last hour or so on friday afternoons reading aloud to the class. He introduced us to this fantastic book and the memory of friday afternoons enthralled in this story are one of my fondest from my school years. I'm now 32 and bought this book to read again and the memories came flooding back. It's even better as an adult and I can't wait until my children are old enough to read it too.
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Fact, Fantasy and Legend, brilliant.
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Combinng elements of fantasy, a factual landscape and an ancient lengend (that does exist, not a mere creation of Garners), the author writes with great fluency and creates fantastic characters. The secret about Cadellin and Grimnir at the end of the book nearly gave me a heart attack sheer drama. If it can do this to a 18 year old just imagine how exciting this book will be for young children! Well worth a read whether you are 7 or 70, fully recommended
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Better than Harry could ever be
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And don't get me wrong. I do like Harry Potter. But I LOVE The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and its sequel The Moon of Gomrath. The novel tells the story of how the modern fallout of a century's old theft draws teenage brother and sister Colin and Susan inexorably into the otherworld and forces them to play a key part in the battle. Much to the distress of the wizard Cadellin Silverbrow who just wishes them to be safe and cannot initially figure out why the forces of darkness are apparently targetting them. But this is no simple tale of good and evil or perhaps more correctly it is not just a simple tale of good and evil. Good and Evil are certainly there and recognisable but they exist at the extremes and most everybody else exists inbetween. There are times when you feel you would like to hit some of the forces of Light over the head with something large and heavy and tell them to stop being such assholes. And unlike in JKR's rather flat characterisations you are meant not to like these characters.(Note - while this is true of Weirdstone it is even truer of the sequel Moon which I will review another time.)
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Classic fantasy stuff
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Like another reviewer here, I first read this excellent and largely unknown book in my teens, way back in the mid 1970s. I've re-read it many times since and recently started to read it to my children, who are aged between 7 and 10. They were totally captivated and enthralled by the story, as I always have been, although surprisingly, they were quite spooked by some of the more sinister parts such as the chapter covering their adventure in the witch's house and their encounter with the sightless hounds. The narrative and general ambience of the story is peculiarly and quintessentially English, something you find also with Harry Potter I imagine (although I've never read any of those stories). This is something "foreign" authors can't hope to achieve, and the story has a flavour of the Famous Five about it, which I particularly appreciate and which I find makes it suitable reading for older children. Part of its fascination of course lies in the fact that all of the places mentioned actually exist in Cheshire and even the Mossock's farm, Highmost Redmanhey, is based on a real farmstead. I seem to recall that the story is based on a genuine legend too (although admittedly I could have been be fooled by Alan Garner's clever story telling). All in all, an excellent book with a worthy, but not quite so good, sequel - The Moon of Gomrath. Of Garner's other novels, I have only found The Owl Service to be of equal enjoyment.
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