Rating: 
Summary: Haunting
Review: This book is carefully written, beautifully entwining ancient Celtic legends with everyday teenagers and creating an aura of mystery around it. Definetely something for hard-core mythology fans, as well as a good book for teenagers.
Rating: 
Summary: Fine Fantasy Novel
Review: This is a very well written and unusual fantasy novel. In some respects, it is a horror novel with the traditional theme of an ancient curse working out its consequences in the modern world. Based on a story from the Mabinogion, a collection of Welsh myths, The Owl Service is set in a small Welsh valley in the contemporary world (or least contemporary when the book was published). The three principal characters, a teenage girl and two teenage boys, seemed doomed to repeat the tragic consequences of a love triangle described in the Mabinogion. Various aspects of the story involve combining mythological events with the actual geography of the valley, a method that Garner uses very well and used well in other books. The quality of writing is very good and Garner mixes the mythological aspects of the story with contemporary elements, in this case featuring the class consciousness of British life. As commented by other reviewers, this is not a book for younger children. Best enjoyed by adults and older, more intelligent teenagers.
Rating:
Summary: Fine Fantasy Novel
Review: This is a very well written and unusual fantasy novel. In some respects, it is a horror novel with the traditional theme of an ancient curse working out its consequences in the modern world. Based on a story from the Mabinogion, a collection of Welsh myths, The Owl Service is set in a small Welsh valley in the contemporary world (or least contemporary when the book was published). The three principal characters, a teenage girl and two teenage boys, seemed doomed to repeat the tragic consequences of a love triangle described in the Mabinogion. Various aspects of the story involve combining mythological events with the actual geography of the valley, a method that Garner uses very well and used well in other books. The quality of writing is very good and Garner mixes the mythological aspects of the story with contemporary elements, in this case featuring the class consciousness of British life. As commented by other reviewers, this is not a book for younger children. Best enjoyed by adults and older, more intelligent teenagers.
Rating:
Summary: Fantasy masterpiece
Review: This is one of the few works of fantasy, out of so much that I have read in 35 years, that stays with me and that impressed me more than ever when I just read it again, perhaps my fifth or sixth reading. Tired of rehashes? This book is fresh, challenging, brooding, and rewarding.It is not essential that the reader know more of "Math Son of Mathonwy," from the Welsh mythic-legendary compendium THE MABINOGION, than is given in The Owl Service. However, older readers may want to look that up. The Charlotte Guest version is easily available online, and the version Alan Garner used, the Gwyn Jones version, is in print.
Rating:
Summary: Some themes never go out of date . . .
Review: This novel won the British Library Association's Carnegie Medal in 1967 -- but like all "young adult" fiction of exceptional quality, it's a very good book, period. Teenaged Roger's father, Clive, has recently married Margaret, whose likewise teenaged daughter, Alison, is the legal inheritor of a house in a brooding Welsh valley, where all of them have gone for a summer break. Old Nancy grew up in the valley but left years ago; now she has been persuaded to return to work as housekeeper, and she's brought along her son, Gwynn, who wants only to get away from the world in which he finds himself stuck. And there's Huw Halfbacon, the strange, almost mystical laborer who is much more to the residents of the valley than his English employers could imagine. It all begins when the three young people discover a complete dinner service in the attic decorated with floral owls, and Alison becomes almost possessed by them. And Roger discovers a streamside stone with a hole bored clear through it, which he is told was made by a anciently thrown spear that killed the man standing behind the stone. It all has to do with stories from the Mabinogion, with traditions that insist on being followed, and with the inescapable patterns of life. And the ending is not what you might expect!
Rating:
Summary: Some themes never go out of date . . .
Review: This novel won the British Library Association's Carnegie Medal in 1967 -- but like all "young adult" fiction of exceptional quality, it's a very good book, period. Teenaged Roger's father, Clive, has recently married Margaret, whose likewise teenaged daughter, Alison, is the legal inheritor of a house in a brooding Welsh valley, where all of them have gone for a summer break. Old Nancy grew up in the valley but left years ago; now she has been persuaded to return to work as housekeeper, and she's brought along her son, Gwynn, who wants only to get away from the world in which he finds himself stuck. And there's Huw Halfbacon, the strange, almost mystical laborer who is much more to the residents of the valley than his English employers could imagine. It all begins when the three young people discover a complete dinner service in the attic decorated with floral owls, and Alison becomes almost possessed by them. And Roger discovers a streamside stone with a hole bored clear through it, which he is told was made by a anciently thrown spear that killed the man standing behind the stone. It all has to do with stories from the Mabinogion, with traditions that insist on being followed, and with the inescapable patterns of life. And the ending is not what you might expect!
Rating: 
Summary: not very convincing
Review: This was a disappointment for me - from the reviews I thought it would be a good read. However, it isn't very well written, and the characters are so unsympathetic (mostly moody and cranky) that it is hard to care about them or what happens to them. Maybe Alison's stepfather is an exception, but even he is a caricature, a sort of Bertie Wooster trying to be a parent. You almost expect him to say "cheerio" or some other cliche. As a fantasy, it isn't very convincing. There are better examples of fantasy for children, such as "Tom's Midnight Garden" which blends fantasy and ordinary reality very well.
Rating:
Summary: It could beget an obsession
Review: What an amazing book! It's scary, romantic, very very sad... I would highly recommend it to anyone who loves that sort of blurry line where history and legend meet, the supernatural and stuff like that. The characters are so well drawn one could believe they're real (I am quite in love with Gwyn) and this book really got me interested in Wales and Welsh history...also with Welsh/English relations. (I almost joined Plaid Cymru, but I didn't because it would be totally pointless seeing as how I'm Canadian) Uh, yeah, read this book! It will, as they say, sweep you off your feet!
Rating:
Summary: Claustrophobic Classic of Adolescence
Review: When I read this in my early teens, I don't think I even vaguely understood it, but somehow it clawed its way under my skin and stayed there. I returned to it, ahem, quite a few years later, to find it a fascinating portrait of taut family dynamics (children adjusting to 'new' family structures), unspoken rivalries and generally the horrible hormonal tensions of adolescent change. It wasn't about owls at all! It's a stunning, sparsely written and fast-paced read, underscored with a creepy, scary atmosphere that could well put you off family holidays in Wales for ever.
Rating:
Summary: You have to read it twice
Review: _The Owl Service_ is a book that has to be read twice to be understood--and a familiarity with the myth of Blodeuwedd doesn't hurt either. This novel takes place in the selfsame valley where Blodeuwedd, Lleu, and Gronw played out their tragic love-triangle in times long past, and the spirit of the conflict still haunts the valley. Every generation, the situation crops up again, with different people playing the parts, but always ending badly. One summer, it is three teenagers who enact the old story; a young girl and her stepbrother, visiting from the city, and a local boy. At first read, it isn't clear what Alison, Roger, and Gwyn have to do with the legend of Blodeuwedd, since their situation is different on the surface. If I'd only read the book once, I might give it two and a half stars. But upon re-reading, the resonances became more apparent, and I began to see the points in the story that correspond to events in the legend. I want to give it three and a half stars, but Amazon won't let me do that, and my grade school teachers drummed it into my head that something-and-a-half rounds up to the next whole number. *wink* So, four stars. I would have liked it better if the characters had been fleshed out more before the legend started controlling their lives; the spirit of the old conflict started turning them into unsympathetic jerks before I had a chance to develop a liking for the people they really were. Still, a decent piece of myth-based fiction.
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