Do children in your world usually perform such tasks?’ Nathan thought of all the books he had ever read, of the Pevensies, Colin and Susan, Harry Potter, Lyra Belacqua and a hundred others. ‘All the time,’ he said. [loc. 5250]
Nathan lives with his mother Annie above a bookshop. He never knew his father. Annie tells him stories about Daniel, her partner, who died in a car crash the day that Nathan was conceived: but she's beginning to wonder if Daniel was Nathan's father, because Daniel and Annie are both white and Nathan looks as though he might have Indian forebears. Their friend Bartlemy, who took in Annie when she was fleeing invisible, but terrifying, pursuit with her baby son, has his suspicions too, and he keeps a close eye on the boy.
Nathan loves to roam the woods with Bartlemy's dog Hoover, but one day he discovers a buried chapel and a cup that's filled with blood. He wants to tell his mother and 'Uncle Barty', but he's unable to speak of it. He can speak of the peculiarly vivid dreams he's been having, in which he seems to travel to another world and talk to people there -- but would anyone believe that he's managed to rescue a drowning man and bring him back?
Meanwhile, Nathan's best friend Hazel resents her grandmother's presence in the attic, not least because she knows the old woman is a witch and that she herself has the Gift. And there's something lurking in the river, and a convergence of interested parties as the Greenstone Grail, believed lost for centuries, surfaces again...
I was reminded of James Treadwell's Advent trilogy (which The Greenstone Grail, first in the Sangreal trilogy and published in 2005, predates by some years): perhaps it's the age of the protagonists or the vaguely Arthurian setting. The Greenstone Grail combines fantasy, science fiction and horror, with hints of secret history (just how old is Bartlemy, and is Hoover merely a dog?) as well as a murder mystery which brings old-fashioned, dedicated Detective Pobjoy onto the scene.
This was a quick and enjoyable read: I fancied a solid, satisfying fantasy trilogy and this delivered, with all those extra flavours mixed in. At times the authorial voice was a little intrusive ("Nathan could not know it, but the whole incident had been wiped from Hoover’s mind") but at others it was sheerly gleeful, and though there is plenty of darkness lurking in the story there is also humour, beauty and joy.
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