The first half of the book is full of delightful details as it interweaves local legends and geography of Alderly Edge (a real place in England), high-fantasy elements like wizards, goblins, and dwarfs, and allusions to ancient Norse and Celtic mythology. The Earldelving chapter was a brilliantly intense and horrifying piece of descriptive writing that had me literally gasping for breath by the end.

Unfortunately, the story really drags in the latter half of the book as the protagonists undertake a slow and tedious crawl across a few miles of English countryside while trying to remain hidden. Finally they reach their destination and the intensity suddenly shoots up to 11 for a few pages in an all-out battle with the forces of evil and then wham, book over.

Still, flawed though it was, I enjoyed reading it. ( )

A complete bore. Taking the children living away from home stumble upon adventure trope of early 20th cent fantasies and grafting on Tolkien trek/quest fell very very flat. With out the rather long uninteresting paths of perils, not much happens and none of that is character development. ( )

Although a "classic", sadly I didn't enjoy this much. I enjoyed Prydain a lot more.
Maybe one that really is for children only. ( )

This cover was the sole reason I purchased this book. Pages 1-97 were why I fell in love with it. Pages 98-155 killed the momentum. And the remaining ~100 pages were the reason I will never crack it open again.

The first third of this story is amazing. Delightfully crafted and appropriately paced. Then the next 25% of the book is a single setting with 2 characters then 4 characters and it is so mundane. Finally things move on but it lost all its magic already. Incredibly disappointing. ( )

Garner's first first novel, and clearly not his best. It's a bold enough quest, though a tad too long. The first half – scene-setting, etc. – is good, it's the latter half – basically a dungeon crawl plus a furtive, stealth trek – that shortening would improve. Either that or the provision of more background information. The usual Garner is all here: thin characters; mythology; Alderley Edge; terse prose. Every writer has to start somewhere. ( )