http://tamaranth.blogspot.com/2023/07/2023099-elidor-alan-garner.html ( )

Quite how Alan Garner's books are labelled for children remains a mystery to me. This is the earliest of his works I've read, and it's no less a story than the others, though its age shows from being settled in a unique time period; not only postwar bombed-site Manchester, but also technologically with wireless and gramophone and television vertical hold.

Garner's signature terse yet tight prose and negligible character development is evident, as is his reliance on melding folklore and mythology to his ends – Childe Rowland, Elidyr, Tuatha Dé Danann, and that of the unicorn.

“The unicorn… because of its intemperance, not knowing how to control itself before the delight it feels towards maidens, forgets its ferocity and wildness, and casting aside all fear it will go up to the seated maiden and sleep in her lap, and thus the hunter takes it.” – Leonardo da Vinci

He does all of this much better in his later works, as one would expect, but no one quite does what he does even at this early stage of his writing. ( )

Like the two previously published books, incoherent, but a bit darker. I listened to it on audio, which made it far more enjoyable than it would have otherwise been. But I really think it's time to stop reading Alan Garner, his novels don't make sense. ( )

I don't know whether it is that the early parts of this book haven't stood the test of time, whether I've actually read too many books with similar enough underlying ideas, or if it is that the early sections so strongly imprinted on my memory that it just feels like a really obvious start to a story. But I found myself, while enjoying the writing, rolling my eyes at bits of the first third or so.

Which might also be my Gen X cynicism showing. Of course the adult in the alt world is making the kids do all the work. What else are we expecting of the Boomer generation. And no, I don't quite live my life that much in black and white, but it was some of what I was finding irritating here. Unlike other stories with the oblivious adults trope, this one was really hard to get through sections where adults could have stepped up, and there were sections where I had to walk away from the book for hours (or days) until I could deal with continuing reading.

Despite me having somewhat grown past it, this is still a strongly written powerful story. I love the ambiguity of the ending, and the cypher of the alternative world -- the viewpoint character(s) really don't have the sophistication/maturity to comprehend what is happening, and the narrative voice doesn't fill that in for the reader. ( )

Four siblings stumble into another world and are tasked with guarding four sacred items by bringing them back into this world for safe-keeping. For a year all seems fine, to the point that some of the children start to doubt that it really happened at all, when warriors from the other place break through to steal the treasures. I found this one frustrating to no end. It starts out too abruptly, plonking the reading down into the story with not nearly enough background (I even checked to make sure I wasn't starting a series midway through) and has just as baffling and lose-endy an ending. Shame, really, because the story seems like it could be a really good one. ( )