Third volume in trilogy beginning with The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and continuing with The Moon of Gomrath. Although this book is a continuation of the previous two, it is not really written for children.

I've read all of Alan Garner this year. I didn't mean to; it just worked out that way.

I didn't read him chronologically; I started with The Voice That Thunders and proceeded with the novels from the middle; going back and to and ending up at Thursbitch followed by the two Colin and Susan books. This is the third. It's an advantage having the second book fresh in your memory.

Boneland is Garner distilled. I can't see how you could make sense of it without reading much of him and knowing of his mental health issues (for which see The Voice That Thunders). And there's so much else that would pass you by.

Garner is a master, and this is a masterpiece, perhaps his masterpiece – it's certainly the culmination of his works – though I cannot recommend it on its own. ( )

Excellent finish for the Weirdstone and the Moon. When I heard it was being published I re-read the Weirdstone of Brisingamen which was always one of my favorite books as a child. I did not re-read the Moon of Gomrath which had always come very much a second to the Weirdstone, and on finishing Boneland I had to re-read it immediately. I am astonished at my lack of insight. In my memories it was always Colin I identified with and thought of as the mover and shaker of the pair - but while the author's perspective is from Colin's point of view in fact it is Susan at the centre of the action. I won't pretend to have pieced a coherent narrative together for this last book, but I'm happy to have the emotional coherence. ( )

Truly stunning. Extremely demanding, but thoroughly rewarding.

Neil Gaiman's review says everything that needs to be said much better than I could say it.

I wouldn't recommend this to anyone who hasn't read the first two tales of Alderney; Brisingham and gomrath. ( )

This is a strange book - which came as no surprise, as Garner's novels have been going from strange to stranger since [b:The Owl Service|83829|The Owl Service |Alan Garner|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1328875903s/83829.jpg|80927]. Here we have a third volume of a childrens' fantasy sequence ([b:The Weirdstone of Brisingamen|694997|The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (Tales of Alderley, #1)|Alan Garner|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1177345171s/694997.jpg|279305] and [b:The Moon of Gomrath|694942|The Moon of Gomrath (Tales of Alderley, #2)|Alan Garner|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1177344653s/694942.jpg|1219230]) - but this is most definitely not aimed at the traditional childrens' market - it's squarely aimed at adult readers, perhaps the readers who read Garner's most famous works as kids, like me, and somehow or another turned into adults in the mean time. So that's pretty odd - I can't think of another trilogy where that happens! But that's just the start of the weirdness.

The book alternates narrative passages and dream sequences. I've read numerous novels with occasional dream sequences and heard of a few that are entirely dreams and read one or two dream-vision poems but I can think of no other novel where dreams occupy such a high proportion of the text without being a dream throughout. So that's unusual, too - but the dreams themselves are strange. Well, all dreams are strange when examined in the cold light of morning, having woken, right? But these are even stranger - they read like Shamanistic spirit journeys - which were generally induced hallucinations. And hallucinations and dreams aren't really the same thing. Then there's the ending. Garner endings have been getting progressively more bonkers, cryptic and inscrutable since [b:Red Shift|307220|Red Shift|Alan Garner|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1173593682s/307220.jpg|298190]. This one is somewhat different from those but no less shocking and baffling, though many things are also made clear. There are some clues that something even more weird than the obvious weirdness is going on - enough foreshadowing if you are paying attention to make it clear that Garner knew what he was doing from the outset - which is no surprise. Garner is a very intelligent writer and he is discussing something interesting here, about truth and story and science and myth and magic.

The story is a little difficult to get into - it took me about 40p - because initially there's no discernible plot and the dream sequences are surreal and a little difficult whilst occupying a higher proportion of the text earlier on - so it's necessary to persevere a bit if you want to find out what happened to Colin after the Moon of Gomrath has passed. But I strongly recommend you do, if you ever liked a Garner story when you were a child. ( )