The Weirdstone was successful because of the brilliant way that Alan Garner blended the human world with the myths and legends. The mythology in this one was interesting, anyway. I'm amused at how often the concept of the Wild Magic and the Wild Hunt comes up in fantasy books -- here, in The Fionavar Tapestry, in The Dark Is Rising... I like it. The descriptions of Susan riding with them, and the way she gets left behind and feels both joy and anguish, are lovely.

Wakeful are the sons of Ormar! Wakeful Maedoc, Midhir, Mathramil! Ride Einheriar of the Herlathing.’ The Keeper (ITV, transmitted 13 June 1983), an episode of the ITV children's series Dramarama: Spooky series The Weirdstone of Brisingamen was dramatised in 6 30-minute parts by Nan Macdonald for the BBC's Home Service broadcast in November 1963. [55] And yet, and yet … "something's going on, and the shape it's taking is interesting in that it's complete at whatever stage I finish it. In other words, provided I get a few paragraphs down and then I just drop dead, it's still complete. It's intriguing me. It's making me think here we go again, perhaps, but in a quite different way," says Garner. "I cannot conceive of not writing. Because everything is so interesting. I've got lots of other things I could pretend to retire into, such as doing more on the academic side, doing more archaeology, doing more historical research, but there are other people who can do that. And I am actually quite haunted by this idea of having to do what only the individual can do."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. Philip Pullman also gave it high praise, stating "Alan Garner is indisputably the great originator, the most important British writer of fantasy since Tolkien." Neil Gaiman has observed that "Alan Garner’s fiction is something special. Garner’s fantasies were smart and challenging, based in the here and now, in which real English places emerged from the shadow of folklore, and in which people found themselves walking, living and battling their way through the dreams and patterns of myth." Phoenix Award Brochure 2012" [ permanent dead link]. Children's Literature Association. Retrieved 12 December 2012. I've been eye-balling this book on my shelf, wondering if I actually want to read it, and since I've been having a hard time reading anything lately, I naturally thought it was the perfect time to try this. At the very least, I thought, it would be really easy to put the book down if I didn't like it, given my current mood. Except that this was so short and nostalgic, I ended up reading it in a single afternoon. Nikolajeva, Maria (1989). "The Insignificance of Time: Red Shift". Children's Literature Association Quarterly. 14 (3): 128–131. doi: 10.1353/chq.0.0763. S2CID 145471358.

Boneland imagines Colin as an adult, a troubled, brilliant astrophysicist who can remember every single thing that has happened to him since the age of 13, but nothing before. From his job at Jodrell Bank, he searches endlessly, fruitlessly, for his sister in the stars: where is Susan, and what happened to her? Bringing together elements of his novels Strandloper and Red Shift, twisting and twining through Colin's story is that of a man from an ancient time, The Watcher, whose lonely quest plays out in language redolent of myth. Although Weirdstone contains one of the most disturbing images in all of children's literature – Colin and Susan crawling through a tunnel deep beneath the earth – Garner says Boneland is the first of his novels genuinely to scare him. "I don't think I've ever frightened myself before when writing but there were areas where there was terror, as though I was looking into somewhere that I didn't know existed before, and it frightened me." 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. Robert Garner and his other relatives had all been craftsmen, and, according to Garner, each successive generation had tried to "improve on, or do something different from, the previous generation". [6] Garner's grandfather, Joseph Garner, "could read, but didn't and so was virtually unlettered". Instead, he taught his grandson the folk tales he knew about The Edge. [3] Garner later remarked that as a result, he was "aware of [the Edge's] magic" as a child, and he and his friends often played there. [7] The story of the king and the wizard living under the hill played an important part in his life, becoming, he explained, "deeply embedded in my psyche" and heavily influencing his later novels. [3] Power at a Price: When Angharad Goldenhand gives Susan the horn Anghalac, she warns that it is only to be used when all else is lost, because once it is sounded you will never know peace again for the rest of your life. At the end, when it is used, this is stated to be its effect on Colin. This is a theme to be developed in the concluding book of the trilogy, Boneland. Alderley Edge, Macclesfield, Mobberly, Lindow and Wilmslow are all real places in Cheshire. Most of the places mentioned in the book along the Edge; The Wizard's Well, Goldenstone, the Beacon and so on are also real. Although Garner is describing the Alderley Edge of fifty years ago, when it really was an isolated farming village in Cheshire a long way away from the nearest city, a long time before it became popular with professional footballers and other people with lots of money and no taste. South Manchester has also encroached vastly in the fifty years since this book was written.I first read the Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner thirty years ago and immediately begged my parents to buy me the sequel – The Moon of Gomrath because the first book was so good.

Selina Place – A local woman, who is revealed to be a shape-shifting witch, indeed the leader of the morthbrood, a secret network of people involved in dark magic. Also known as The Morrigan, the ancient name of an Irish battle and death goddess, she is in league with powerful forces of darkness.

Treacle Walker was shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize, making Garner the oldest writer nominated at the time. [54] She said it was like a dream,” said Cadellin. “I wish I could dismiss it so but it is truth, and I suspect there is even more than she remembers. In a 1989 interview, Garner noted that although writing The Stone Book Quartet had been "exhausting", it had been "the most rewarding of everything" he'd done to date. [3] Philip described the quartet as "a complete command of the material he had been working and reworking since the start of his career". [24] In conclusion, this is a very strange book. There are an incredible number of really good things in it, but there is too much unnecessary detail for very young children and a conclusion that will not satisfy most adult readers. Therefore it falls into a category where it does not really satisfy any target audience, which is a shame because I love Alan Garner’s work.