Title Elidor Series --- Author Alan Garner Cover Art --- Publisher --- First Printing 1965 Category Middlegrade Warnings None Main Characters Roland, Nicholas, David, Helen, Malebron, Findhorn Main Elements Wizards, unicorns

A mechanical street map, a deserted slum, a church in ruins, and a football. Four ordinary things lead the Watson children on an extraordinary adventure to a magical land called Elidor. In pursuit of four ancient treasures, the forces of evil have crossed over into our world, and it falls to the Watson children to find the treasures, seal the bridge between worlds, and guard the strayed unicorn Findhorn . . . even though their heroism may cost them everything.

This book was both beautiful and lacking at the same time. We have here a classic portal story, where children from our world are transported to Elidor, a world blighted by...some kind of darkness, it wasn't quite well explained. They needed to retrieve four treasures, which they succeed in doing but then are chased by to our world by creatures of fear and nightmare. We basically learn almost nothing at all about Elidor or the mysterious Malebron.

They spend a year in our world, trying to stop the treasures from wreaking havoc on anything electronic, as well as having unexplained visions of ghostly visitors as Elidor and our world kind of touch. Eventually a unicorn does come to play a role (I wouldn't call this a unicorn book, just one that has a unicorn in it, though it has to play a surprisingly unexpected role). And, I guess without too much of a spoiler, this is a standalone middlegrade/YA book after all, Elidor is save.

On the positive side, I found it quite magical, mysterious and enchanting, even when we are in our familiar world. On the negative side, there is almost no world building for Elidor at all. I have no idea what caused the darkness. I have no idea what the treasures were for. We have no idea what happens to Elidor after it was saved. We only meet one person from that world aside from Findhorn. It leaves one wanting to know more about the place and it's magic and it's history. But the book is short and tells only the tale of the four children (and like many middlegrade books, they have parents who are kindly but clueless).

But I did enjoy it, and I can see why it is considered a classic, it is beautifully written. There's just something there that makes it wonderful, if only there was a little bit more to flesh it out.

An interesting note is that Garner was inspired by the line "Childe Rowland to the Dark Tower Came" by Shakespeare in King Lear, hence the main character being named Roland. This was the same inspiration for Stephen King's The Dark Tower series which he started in 1967. Elidor was published in 1965.

I do add a caveat, when reading this it was a lot like reading The Riddle-Master of Hed by Patricia A. McKillip. They had similar flaws with a lack of world build, in depth characters, and other things we expect these days. But these were the books that are at the root of the fantasy genre we have today. So while they may seem stiff, and lacking content at times, there is a magic or reverence in them you don't find in something like Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series or in Rowling's Harry Potter. Those series are great too, but when you read them you can just blast right through they, they are "easy" to read. Elidor forces you to slow down and savour the words, what it lacks in some parts is makes up for in language. It makes you feel your are reading a true classic like Lord of the Rings, instead of the most recent blockbuster that got big more through good PR than through good writing.