Book log 2019 #5 - The Owl Service
Apr. 19th, 2019 10:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lonemagpieTHE OWL SERVICE by Alan Garner
I felt like watching the DVD of the series and then this turned up in our library room, so what the hell. It’s highly acclaimed, and indeed much of it is worthy of that praise – some good flow in places, good mixing in of folklore and myth with a class-clashing subtest, and so-on. The dialogue has dated badly, but that can’t be helped.
On the downside, there are various leaps and jars that make the timescale unclear, often feel like characters have suddenly switched personalities from one line to the next, and leave you wondering “wait, why isn;t this person buggering off” or “why are they suddenly perfectly OK?” It’s a shame as there’s a good folkloric and real character drama here, but it’s either 50% longer than it needs to be, or 50% shorter, and I can’t decide which it is.
Also the ending is spectacularly abrupt, as if it was one of those things where the writer was contracted on pain of death to not go a word over the commissioned count and so just stopped when he hit it, without covering the fallout. Or as if it was a cliffhanger for a sequel that never happened.
I felt like watching the DVD of the series and then this turned up in our library room, so what the hell. It’s highly acclaimed, and indeed much of it is worthy of that praise – some good flow in places, good mixing in of folklore and myth with a class-clashing subtest, and so-on. The dialogue has dated badly, but that can’t be helped.
On the downside, there are various leaps and jars that make the timescale unclear, often feel like characters have suddenly switched personalities from one line to the next, and leave you wondering “wait, why isn;t this person buggering off” or “why are they suddenly perfectly OK?” It’s a shame as there’s a good folkloric and real character drama here, but it’s either 50% longer than it needs to be, or 50% shorter, and I can’t decide which it is.
Also the ending is spectacularly abrupt, as if it was one of those things where the writer was contracted on pain of death to not go a word over the commissioned count and so just stopped when he hit it, without covering the fallout. Or as if it was a cliffhanger for a sequel that never happened.