The Moon of Gomrath
Jun. 10th, 2012 03:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
purplecatWhen I blogged about The Wierdstone of Brisingamen there was a collective shout of Albanac from my flist. A sufficiently enthusiastic shout that I thought I'd check out The Moon of Gomrath as well. I can't honestly say I enjoyed this as much as Wierdstone though I think it is, in some ways, a more mature book but it felt oddly disjointed to me like the ideas hadn't quite coalesced in Garner's mind before he set out.
It won't have helped that I read the book in two halves with a long break in the middle. This may have contributed to my sense that it didn't quite hang together but, on the other hand, this is more two stories than one which are very loosely held together by the menace of the Brollachan and so the break in the middle felt quite natural in a way. The story is also somewhat disjoint in, for instance, never quite convincing of the menace of the wild hunt or even, truth be told, of the Morrigan herself. We get told how dangerous they are but we don't actually get shown very much. I think The Wierdstone of Brisingamen was much more successful both as a coherent story and in conveying the gravity of the situation. That said Moon of Gomrath is, to a certain extent, trying to deal with heftier issues than Wierdstone. While the children are still the focus of the story, they are inhabiting a much more grown up world where, for instance, the extent to which you should be prepared to sacrifice many lives in order to save one is a real issue. Ultimately though, I felt this added depth was somewhat short-changed by a rather abrupt ending that refused to deal with the aftermath of the events of the story.
As for Albanac, I don't know, maybe I'm now the wrong age for this type of character. I found him a little generic, to be honest, and a little too much of a deus ex machina - too much mystery and not enough actual personality. I suspect the same complaint can probably be levelled at, for instance, Aragorn, but I was younger and more prepared to do the mental legwork of filling in a character for myself when I first encountered Tolkein.
The Moon of Gomrath isn't a bad, or even a mediocre, book by any stretch of the imagination but I don't think it is as good as its predecessor and ultimately I was disappointed.
It won't have helped that I read the book in two halves with a long break in the middle. This may have contributed to my sense that it didn't quite hang together but, on the other hand, this is more two stories than one which are very loosely held together by the menace of the Brollachan and so the break in the middle felt quite natural in a way. The story is also somewhat disjoint in, for instance, never quite convincing of the menace of the wild hunt or even, truth be told, of the Morrigan herself. We get told how dangerous they are but we don't actually get shown very much. I think The Wierdstone of Brisingamen was much more successful both as a coherent story and in conveying the gravity of the situation. That said Moon of Gomrath is, to a certain extent, trying to deal with heftier issues than Wierdstone. While the children are still the focus of the story, they are inhabiting a much more grown up world where, for instance, the extent to which you should be prepared to sacrifice many lives in order to save one is a real issue. Ultimately though, I felt this added depth was somewhat short-changed by a rather abrupt ending that refused to deal with the aftermath of the events of the story.
As for Albanac, I don't know, maybe I'm now the wrong age for this type of character. I found him a little generic, to be honest, and a little too much of a deus ex machina - too much mystery and not enough actual personality. I suspect the same complaint can probably be levelled at, for instance, Aragorn, but I was younger and more prepared to do the mental legwork of filling in a character for myself when I first encountered Tolkein.
The Moon of Gomrath isn't a bad, or even a mediocre, book by any stretch of the imagination but I don't think it is as good as its predecessor and ultimately I was disappointed.
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Date: 2012-06-11 09:23 am (UTC)