Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant, 7 Jun 2000
By A Customer
I've just finished this, and it's one of those brilliant books you don't want to end. Brenchley has a totally unique style, giving the story the quality of a myth or hallucination. The central character is totally beguiling, and Brenchley plays around with different viewpoints, moving from the first to the third person, giving dark and disturbing hints about what's to come. It's a novel that requires you to do some work and come up with some answers for yourself. Towards the end, things click into place so neatly you can almost hear the click... then they click again. The only word I can think of is "brilliant," and this really deserves to sell by the truckload. I'm about to order more of Chaz Brenchley's books.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A wonderful and terrible book., 2 Sep 1999
By A Customer
This is a mystery which doesn't fit the detective fiction genre, an intellectual challenge which makes the reader care about its characters.Rowan is the cleverest boy in the dale, the one who gets a place at Cambridge - but when his friend and rival there is murdered, he comes home looking for the security of familiar people and places. Rowan's mother is a professional teller of tales, so he knows how to tell a story, and one of the major pleasures of the book is watching how he does this: how the names "David" and "Juliet" appear, for example, as people who matter to Rowan, but how gradually we learn who they are, and why they matter. By the end of the book, all the answers have been given, all the pieces of the jigsaw are in the box - but the reader still has to work to put the puzzle together! Rowan's shelter is a beautifully described northern valley, all dry stone walls, wide starry skies and atmospheric forests, but it too is threatened, by planners who want to construct a reservoir, but also by New Age travellers who plan to camp there for the winter. There is plenty of action, sudden death and conflict; but there is also the deep satisfaction of a tale skilfully told. It's a beautiful book, to be read more than once.
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A good novel, that doesn't quite live up to its potential, 12 Jun 2001
It would be true, I think, to say that this is Chaz Brenchley's weakest novel since Mall Time. And believe you me - that just shows how strong a writer he is. This sees Brenchley return to the crime genre, he last visited with Paradise - indeed, this has been described as a companion to that volume. This is more reminiscent of Brenchley's early works - murder, mystery and an unlikely hero who really isn't very heroic. There is not the "dark fantasy" that flavoured Dead of Light, Light Errant or Dispossession. As ever, Brenchley's prose draws the reader in, and carries the story along. The scenery is evoked brilliantly, the characters carefully drawn, and very engaging, and the story unfolds with the gnawing sense of unease and horror that characterised earlier novels such as The Samaritan and The Garden. And yet, this novel has flaws. The story is nothing new, and doesn't quite develop as fully as you expect, leaving several questions frustratingly unanswered. Sat next to any of the other novels Brenchley has produced in the last decade, this novel just isn't as good. If you can lay your hands on a copy of Paradise, I would urge you to do so. But, since much of Chaz Brenchley's earlier works seem to have fallen into a black hole, I'd recommend this to anyone who wants to know how this master got started. And if you can remember the days before Dead of Light and Dispossession, this novel is worth it just for the feeling of nostalgia. Beside which, Chaz Brenchley is always a pleasure to read - this may not be his best work by a long shot, but it's very, very well worth reading.
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by Chaz Brenchley
