I'd like to hear your thoughts on Boneland at some point.
It reminded me most of Red Shift (1973), slightly of Strandloper (1996); I read it without re-reading either of the first two novels to see whether it would stand on its own, which it does. The idea of tracking the psychological damage of being the hero of a children's fantasy is one which has interested me for years and Alan Garner does it in a way which isn't strictly any more realist than being the hero of a children's fantasy in the first place (or at least intermittently non-realist: I believe all the fractured layers of Colin's self that grind up against each other and refuse to integrate or even let him near the last unsplintered place in his life when he was thirteen, and I believe the ways the psychotherapist doesn't let him off the hook for it, but she herself is only a believable character if she's really something else entirely), but I think it works. He writes ritual beautifully, patterning. He has since The Owl Service (1967). There are ways in which Boneland is what I wanted from the second half of Robert Holdstock's Lavondyss (1988), only more so. There are also ways in which it completely failed to come together at the end for me, but I think it's doing so deliberately: it resolves in another key. If it weren't for the second storyline with the shaman, I'd say it wasn't a genre book at all.
no subject
It reminded me most of Red Shift (1973), slightly of Strandloper (1996); I read it without re-reading either of the first two novels to see whether it would stand on its own, which it does. The idea of tracking the psychological damage of being the hero of a children's fantasy is one which has interested me for years and Alan Garner does it in a way which isn't strictly any more realist than being the hero of a children's fantasy in the first place (or at least intermittently non-realist: I believe all the fractured layers of Colin's self that grind up against each other and refuse to integrate or even let him near the last unsplintered place in his life when he was thirteen, and I believe the ways the psychotherapist doesn't let him off the hook for it, but she herself is only a believable character if she's really something else entirely), but I think it works. He writes ritual beautifully, patterning. He has since The Owl Service (1967). There are ways in which Boneland is what I wanted from the second half of Robert Holdstock's Lavondyss (1988), only more so. There are also ways in which it completely failed to come together at the end for me, but I think it's doing so deliberately: it resolves in another key. If it weren't for the second storyline with the shaman, I'd say it wasn't a genre book at all.