The Weirdstone of Brisingamen is the first book by Alan Garner. While it is not his greatest work, it is still solidly written. Its publication history is also interesting, speaking to the post-Tolkien publishing world.
If you are ever so lucky as to delve deep into a subgenre, and its subgenres within that (plans within plans…), you will well know that some authors are functionally unknown outside of the small(ish) core of devoted followers but are required reading within that group. One of these is Alan Garner and The Weirdstone of Brisingamen.
The British depictions of “children’s weird,” particularly in terms of “folk horror,” are deeply tied to Garner and his work. In particular, his book The Owl Service (and its TV adaptation) manages to pack a lot of magic into its slim 176 pages, and it also raises issues of class, madness, trauma (interpersonal, generational, cultural), and horror. But Garner did not begin with The Owl Service. His first book was The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, first published in 1960.
The Weirdstone of Brisingamen feels like an artist beginning to arrange their palette. There are moments in which different styles are being experimented with and moments that are clearly trying to do something new with the familiar base materials. The nature of Weirdstone‘s publication is significant here. While Garner did not set out to do so, his publisher signed him on the basis of the title alone, as the name was mockbuster-similar to The Lord of the Rings, which had just become a success. There’s a wizard, dwarves, a piece of magical jewelry, great evil to be fought, and a quest; there, it’s Dollar Tree LOTR, and nobody will notice the difference, or so the publisher thought. Had Garner led with his trippier, more experimental works and ideas—let alone his more scathing views on class—we might not have heard of him at all.
In detail, Weirdstone follows children Colin and Susan as they are caught up in a quest about the strange jewel in Susan’s bracelet, the titular weirdstone. A shape-shifting sorceress, an evil wizard, and the dark spirit Nastrond all want the weirdstone and its magic for themselves, while a good wizard and his dwarvish retinue help the children protect the stone’s power. The characters travel through gardens, thickets, pine forests, snowy mountain peaks, and everything in between.
One of my favorite parts of this book is the sense of place that Garner gives. The pressure of spelunking, the smothering feeling of sand, the cold damp of mud and the weathering effect of wind. I do not recommend this book for people who have claustrophobia, as there are a lot of tight spaces in this story.
In actuality, there’s a firm avoidance of knockoff Tolkien that (from my perspective, decades removed and long entrenched in less wise but more cynical publishing decisions) seems like a bold choice. That’s not to say one is better or worse, just that Weirdstone has very little relation to The Lord of the Rings beyond a few broad strokes. The wizard Cadellin, for instance, is a surprisingly vague and desperate figure. Garner, even at this early stage, does not condescend to his audience. Characters do their best and make good choices based on their knowledge at the time, and sometimes that is not enough. When evil triumphs, it is not because of their wickedness or the weakness of good, but rather because evil happens to be better prepared or simply gets lucky.
Have you read The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, or other works by Alan Garner? What are some other not-quite-Tolkein tales that deserve to stand on their own merit? Let’s meet up for a retro-themed Weirdstone-type quest in Seattle!