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The Landslide
"Will my poor book ever be read by anyone? It is about a dragon and a sea serpent, and a kind of prehistoric dog and an old man and a boy and a priest. I sent it to a publisher last July and it has been lost ever since. I know it is good ... It is unlike any story that has ever been written before." Thus lamented Stephen Gilbert, and when a copy of the manuscript was finally found and published in 1943, the critics agreed: "The Landslide" was a fresh and original fantasy story, and its author was hailed as an exciting new voice in modern Irish fiction.
A landslide in a remote section of the Irish coast exposes a long-buried primeval world, filled with lush and exotic vegetation and an array of strange creatures, including a dragon and a sea serpent. Twelve-year-old Wolfe and his grandfather are the first to discover the marvels, and as they befriend and communicate with the animals, they experience wonder and excitement unlike anything they have known before. But their idyllic happiness cannot last: the narrow-minded priest Father Binyon and the superstitious locals believe the creatures have been sent by the devil, and they intend to exterminate them ... and Wolfe and his grandfather.
A landslide in a remote section of the Irish coast exposes a long-buried primeval world, filled with lush and exotic vegetation and an array of strange creatures, including a dragon and a sea serpent. Twelve-year-old Wolfe and his grandfather are the first to discover the marvels, and as they befriend and communicate with the animals, they experience wonder and excitement unlike anything they have known before. But their idyllic happiness cannot last: the narrow-minded priest Father Binyon and the superstitious locals believe the creatures have been sent by the devil, and they intend to exterminate them ... and Wolfe and his grandfather.
213 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1943
3 people are currently reading
78 people want to read
About the author
Stephen Gilbert
5 books16 followersStephen Gilbert (1912-2010) was born in Newcastle, Co. Down in 1912. He was sent to England for boarding school from age 10 to 13 and afterwards to a Scottish public school, which he left without passing any exams or obtaining a leaving certificate. He returned to Belfast, where he worked briefly as a journalist before joining his father’s tea and seed business. In 1931, just before his nineteenth birthday, Gilbert met novelist Forrest Reid, by that time in his mid-fifties. Reid’s numerous novels reflect his lifelong fascination with teenage boys, and he was quickly drawn to Gilbert; the two commenced a sometimes turbulent friendship that lasted until Reid’s death in 1947. Reid acted as mentor to Gilbert, who had literary aspirations, and ultimately depicted an idealized version of their relationship in the novel Brian Westby (1934).
Gilbert’s first novel, The Landslide (1943), a fantasy involving prehistoric creatures which appear in a remote part of Ireland after being uncovered by a landslide, appeared to generally positive reviews and was dedicated to Reid. A realistic novel, Bombardier (1944), followed, based on Gilbert’s experiences in the Second World War. Gilbert’s third novel, Monkeyface (1948), concerns what seems to be an ape, called “Bimbo,” discovered in South America and brought back to Belfast, where it learns to talk. The Burnaby Experiments appeared in 1952, five years after Reid’s death, and is a thinly disguised portrayal of their relationship from Gilbert’s point of view and a belated response to Brian Westby. His final novel, Ratman’s Notebooks (1968), the story of a loner who learns he can train rats to kill, would become his most famous, being twice filmed as Willard (1971; 2003).
Gilbert married his wife Kathleen Stevenson in 1945; the two had four children, and Gilbert devoted most of his time from the 1950s onward to family life and his seed business. He died in Northern Ireland in 2010 at age 97.
Gilbert’s first novel, The Landslide (1943), a fantasy involving prehistoric creatures which appear in a remote part of Ireland after being uncovered by a landslide, appeared to generally positive reviews and was dedicated to Reid. A realistic novel, Bombardier (1944), followed, based on Gilbert’s experiences in the Second World War. Gilbert’s third novel, Monkeyface (1948), concerns what seems to be an ape, called “Bimbo,” discovered in South America and brought back to Belfast, where it learns to talk. The Burnaby Experiments appeared in 1952, five years after Reid’s death, and is a thinly disguised portrayal of their relationship from Gilbert’s point of view and a belated response to Brian Westby. His final novel, Ratman’s Notebooks (1968), the story of a loner who learns he can train rats to kill, would become his most famous, being twice filmed as Willard (1971; 2003).
Gilbert married his wife Kathleen Stevenson in 1945; the two had four children, and Gilbert devoted most of his time from the 1950s onward to family life and his seed business. He died in Northern Ireland in 2010 at age 97.
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September 29, 2025
In an instance of unexpected serendipity, it turns out that the last two books that I've read share one important factor. Just recently, I mentioned here how much I had enjoyed Forrest Reid's 1916 novel "The Spring Song," an absolutely charming book that conflates childhood adventure, madness, a haunting, Grecian gods, dognapping, and a juvenile detective into its sui generis story line. But what I was not aware of when I started my next book, Stephen Gilbert's "The Landslide," was that Forrest Reid had not only served as Gilbert's mentor and teacher, but had also helped him prepare the manuscript for this, his first book, and steered him to prospective publishers. (Reid, who was 37 years older than Gilbert, was also, by all reports, very much in love with the younger man, and took Gilbert's engagement--to a woman--very badly. But that is a story for another day.) Now, I am happy to report that Gilbert evidently learned quite a lot from his mentor, and that his first novel is very much a success.
"The Landslide," which was dedicated to Reid, was written between October 1936 and April 1937 but would not be published till 1943, when the British firm Faber & Faber came out with a hardcover edition. The novel would then go OOPs (out of prints) for no fewer than 70 years, until the fine folks at Valancourt Books opted to, uh, unearth it in 2013. As for Gilbert himself, he was born in County Down in Northern Ireland (as had Reid) in 1912. Before his passing in 2010, at the ripe old age of 97, Gilbert came out with five novels, all of them currently available from Valancourt: the book in question; "Bombardier" (1944), the author's only novel with no fantastic content, and based on his WW2 experiences; "Monkeyface" (1948), in which a "missing link" of sorts is discovered in the jungles of South America and brought back to Belfast; "The Burnaby Experiments" (1952), which deals with spirit projection and an investigation into the afterlife; and finally "Ratman's Notebooks" (1968), probably his most well-known book as a result of its being adapted in 1971 as the cinematic hit "Willard." And, as Andrew Doyle tells us in his remarkably scholarly, 19-page introduction to this Valancourt edition, just recently, a trove of Gilbert-related material has been discovered at Northern Ireland's Queen's University, including 14 unpublished novels! Surely, good reason for all longtime fans--and brand-new fans such as myself--to rejoice!
"The Landslide" is narrated to us by one Wolfe Emmet, who tells us of an adventure that he'd had around his 12th birthday. Wolfe had lived atop a hill overlooking a fishing village on the west coast of Ireland, sharing a cottage with his parents and his paternal grandfather (who he refers to continually as "Gran'papa"). His parents had somehow eked out a living as farmers on the rocky soil, and life for them and for the sleepy village had been placid enough...until, that is, a week of heavy rain resulted in the titular landslide near the area. Following this event, Wolfe, while gazing at the sea from atop a cliff, had noticed what looked like a sea serpent romping in the surf, and had also seen a green-glowing dragon walking on the land! The next day, something big and lumbering had wrecked the Emmets' henhouse at night, while the family had cowered behind locked doors. Shortly after that, Wolfe had discovered a tract of primeval jungle not far away from the coastal landslide, with all manner of unusual flora and fauna. He'd made friends with a green, doglike creature that Gran'papa had named Procyon, and in time, he and his grandfather had not only become friendly with the Dragon and the Sea Serpent, but also with a host of other prehistoric creatures that had been unearthed. These creatures from the distant past had turned out to be telepathic, and thus an easy means of communication had been effected. Wolfe and Gran'papa had spent many pleasant summer days at the Far Shore, getting to know their new companions. And then the trouble started.
When the Dragon was discovered sleeping inside the village church, the superstitious locals were naturally convinced that the Devil himself was responsible. An exorcism was performed by the village priest, Father Binyon, while the locals began to mutter about Gran'papa being a wizard. After several murderous attempts were made on the lives of both the Dragon and Procyon, Wolfe and Gran'papa had decided to move away from the village and into a cave that the Dragon had excavated for them on the shore. Again, things seemed to be going well, until the locals began their homicidal ways once more, with both Wolfe and Gran'papa as the targets of their wrath! And making matters even worse, as summer had drawn to an end, the weather had grown more and more damp...and increasingly cold....
In a book filled with any number of wonderful attributes, I would have to say that the single greatest aspect, for this reader, is the sweet and loving relationship between Wolfe and his grandfather...an elderly, no longer spry gentleman who's wise and caring, a lover of nature and yet very knowledgeable about the ways of men. Everyone should be fortunate enough to have such a cool grandparent! "The Landslide," as the capsule summary above perhaps suggests, tells a simple story, yet it is one that culminates with a profoundly moving ending. The book would surely be a perfect fit for a younger audience, say 13 and up, despite the occasional slang term ("marlies," anyone?) and a few words that might send the younger readers off to the dictionary, such as "curragh" and "poteen." (And yes, I did indeed require a dictionary for those two myself!) The thought strikes me that "The Landslide" might also be a suitable basis for an animated film, such as one from Pixar here in the U.S. or--even better--Studio Ghibli in Japan. Gilbert's novel grows increasingly dark and grim as it progresses, and that moving ending that I alluded to is a surprisingly downbeat one. Still, I do think it one that a YA audience might easily handle, be it read on a page or watched on the big screen. The book concludes the only way it really could have and yet not in the manner one might expect, and Gilbert's determination to not provide a sappy ending is to be commended.
The author also showed great imagination in the variety of outlandish creatures that Wolfe and Gran'papa observe or meet. Let's see: there's an eight-foot-high flower with a blue eye in its center, a 30-foot-long caterpillar, a half lizard-half rock critter, crimson scorpions, squirrel-sized hornets, bright-red reptiles, and the bright-green Procyon...not to mention the Dragon and the Sea Serpent. Thank goodness, all of these life-forms are gentle and well mannered! And the Dragon and the Sea Serpent, credibly enough, are even shown to be flawed creatures: The Dragon has a well-controlled violent streak that does manage to emerge on occasion, while the Sea Serpent is shown to be something of a tempter when he tries to lure Wolfe to depart with him to foreign, warmer shores. As for the book's secondary, human characters, they are unfailingly well drawn, be it Wolfe's stern but loving mother, his weak but sympathetic father, or the morally conflicted yet ultimately decent Father Binyon. One curious aspect in Gilbert's book is the fact that the ordinary animals of today become both telepathic and peaceful in the presence of the Dragon, leading to the remarkable scene in which former enemies--cats, dogs, mice, foxes--sit together and have a nonverbal conversation that we are privy to. As Gran'papa tells us, all animals were probably once telepathic, but their instrument controlling the power has grown rusty over time. How the Dragon reasserts the old ability in both men and other animals, while at the same time engendering a feeling of brotherhood (amongst the four-legged creatures, at least), is never satisfactorily explained.
As might be expected, Gilbert provides his readers with any number of well-done scenes and set pieces. Among them: Wolfe's discovery of the newly emerged primeval forest, with all its previously unseen wonders; Wolfe's ride on top of the Sea Serpent, as he zips over the waves; the locals' discovery of the Dragon sleeping in their church, with the resultant exorcism and attempted stoning; the mob's attempts to kill Procyon and, later, Gran'papa; that remarkable back-and-forth conversation between all the animals; the thrilling sequence in which a mob attacks the encampment at Far Shore and is beaten back by an army of cats, dogs, scorpions, mice, bulls, snakes, insects and horses; and finally, the scenes in which the early-winter weather begins to take a ruinous toll.
Gilbert's book, if I haven't made it clear before now, is beautifully written, employing simple yet compulsively readable language. Take, for example, what Gran'papa thinks out loud as he and Wolfe prepare to explore the area of the landslide:
"...What is round that corner? Something as strange as the Sirens. It may be a Gorgon or a Cyclops. When we go round there we shall return to the age of adventure--the age of Scylla and Charybdis. Ever since that age there has been nothing strange, or mysterious, or inexplicable, in the whole world. Everything has been cleared up and solved and explained, and now, by just going round a corner, we can step back thousands and thousands and thousands of years...."
And my goodness, how many words of wisdom and moments of profound insight are to be had here! You'll surely feel compelled to take a highlighter to some of them. Thus, Gran'papa says of Father Binyon "The truth doesn't matter to him, nor to the Church. It's the attitude they think about, and I know what that'll be...." Regarding the prehistoric humans, Gran'papa opines "Man was the worst of the animals then, but isn't he still?" Or, as the Dragon puts it, "When I lived before, Man was not the greatest of the beasts. We were the greatest; but we did not oppress the other animals, nor molest them in any way. It surprises me that Man has been allowed to do what he has done." As Gran'papa tells the Dragon about modern-day cats, "They are the strangest and most unaccountable of all creatures." And he expresses his opinion of the superstitious villagers thus: "Anything they don't understand they think is wrong--and there's very little they do understand." And as the well-meaning Father Binyon at one point declares, "...to avoid hurting people's feelings is one of the most difficult things in life. But also one of the most important...." And so many dozens more. The book is fairly priceless in that regard...simply written but full of meaning and wonderful nuggets of truth.
But getting back to that instance of serendipity that I mentioned up top, I am actually quite happy to have read "The Spring Song" and "The Landslide" back to back. Putting aside the common thread of Forrest Reid, the two books also share some other similarities. Both are set in rural Ireland, both feature young boys (Grif Weston, the main lead in Reid's book, is 13, while Wolfe here, again, is 12) and their sweet relationship with a grandfather, both feature an adventure that transpires over the course of a long summer, both feature hints (well, more than hints, in the Gilbert book) of a hidden world that exists just outside of our range of perception, both feature a dog or doglike creature very much in peril, and both come fully loaded with a superabundance of charm. So yes, the two books do manage to complement one another very nicely, as things turn out.
I did have a few small problems with Gilbert's first novel that prevents me from giving it a perfect grade, however. For one thing, some of his descriptions of the geographical terrain in the vicinity of Wolfe's cottage were very hard for me to envision. Wolfe lives atop a hill overlooking the local village, which itself seems to lie above (?) an inlet where the fishermen's dock is. Meanwhile, on another side of the hill lies the way to the landslide above the Far Shore, and...oh, never mind. I did my best at visualizing the area, although whether or not my mental pictures tallied with what the author intended is another story. More problematic for this reader, however, was the explanation for how the Dragon and the other prehistoric animals managed to emerge, whole and living, into our world and time. At one point it is suggested that they had all somehow entered into an eons-long hibernation of sorts, only to be awoken by that landslide on page 1 of the book. But Gilbert muddies the issue when the Dragon allows Wolfe to see the last images that he can remember before being reborn...images of earthquake, volcano, tidal wave and general destruction. So were the animals all caught in a cataclysm of some kind, putting them into a comatose state that endured for millennia? It's impossible to know. (Perhaps this is why the Dragon can only call their advent in our modern world "a strange accident.") And even if this is indeed the case, how do we then explain the survival and emergence of the ocean-dwelling Sea Serpent, who shouldn't have been affected by a local landslide anyway? A little more explanation would have been appreciated...by this reader, anyway. Personally, I would've been content with a hidden world of prehistoric creatures living beneath the modern-day Irish soil, and unearthed by a week of heavy rain. That would have sufficed for me...putting aside for the moment the matter of the Sea Serpent. But these are mere quibbles. At bottom, I cannot imagine anyone not being both entertained and (here comes that unavoidable word again!) charmed by Gilbert's work here. It is, simply put, a splendid first novel, and I greatly look forward to reading "Monkeyface" next....
(By the way, this review originally appeared on the FanLit website at https://fantasyliterature.com/ ... a most ideal destination for all fans of charming fantasies such as this....)
"The Landslide," which was dedicated to Reid, was written between October 1936 and April 1937 but would not be published till 1943, when the British firm Faber & Faber came out with a hardcover edition. The novel would then go OOPs (out of prints) for no fewer than 70 years, until the fine folks at Valancourt Books opted to, uh, unearth it in 2013. As for Gilbert himself, he was born in County Down in Northern Ireland (as had Reid) in 1912. Before his passing in 2010, at the ripe old age of 97, Gilbert came out with five novels, all of them currently available from Valancourt: the book in question; "Bombardier" (1944), the author's only novel with no fantastic content, and based on his WW2 experiences; "Monkeyface" (1948), in which a "missing link" of sorts is discovered in the jungles of South America and brought back to Belfast; "The Burnaby Experiments" (1952), which deals with spirit projection and an investigation into the afterlife; and finally "Ratman's Notebooks" (1968), probably his most well-known book as a result of its being adapted in 1971 as the cinematic hit "Willard." And, as Andrew Doyle tells us in his remarkably scholarly, 19-page introduction to this Valancourt edition, just recently, a trove of Gilbert-related material has been discovered at Northern Ireland's Queen's University, including 14 unpublished novels! Surely, good reason for all longtime fans--and brand-new fans such as myself--to rejoice!
"The Landslide" is narrated to us by one Wolfe Emmet, who tells us of an adventure that he'd had around his 12th birthday. Wolfe had lived atop a hill overlooking a fishing village on the west coast of Ireland, sharing a cottage with his parents and his paternal grandfather (who he refers to continually as "Gran'papa"). His parents had somehow eked out a living as farmers on the rocky soil, and life for them and for the sleepy village had been placid enough...until, that is, a week of heavy rain resulted in the titular landslide near the area. Following this event, Wolfe, while gazing at the sea from atop a cliff, had noticed what looked like a sea serpent romping in the surf, and had also seen a green-glowing dragon walking on the land! The next day, something big and lumbering had wrecked the Emmets' henhouse at night, while the family had cowered behind locked doors. Shortly after that, Wolfe had discovered a tract of primeval jungle not far away from the coastal landslide, with all manner of unusual flora and fauna. He'd made friends with a green, doglike creature that Gran'papa had named Procyon, and in time, he and his grandfather had not only become friendly with the Dragon and the Sea Serpent, but also with a host of other prehistoric creatures that had been unearthed. These creatures from the distant past had turned out to be telepathic, and thus an easy means of communication had been effected. Wolfe and Gran'papa had spent many pleasant summer days at the Far Shore, getting to know their new companions. And then the trouble started.
When the Dragon was discovered sleeping inside the village church, the superstitious locals were naturally convinced that the Devil himself was responsible. An exorcism was performed by the village priest, Father Binyon, while the locals began to mutter about Gran'papa being a wizard. After several murderous attempts were made on the lives of both the Dragon and Procyon, Wolfe and Gran'papa had decided to move away from the village and into a cave that the Dragon had excavated for them on the shore. Again, things seemed to be going well, until the locals began their homicidal ways once more, with both Wolfe and Gran'papa as the targets of their wrath! And making matters even worse, as summer had drawn to an end, the weather had grown more and more damp...and increasingly cold....
In a book filled with any number of wonderful attributes, I would have to say that the single greatest aspect, for this reader, is the sweet and loving relationship between Wolfe and his grandfather...an elderly, no longer spry gentleman who's wise and caring, a lover of nature and yet very knowledgeable about the ways of men. Everyone should be fortunate enough to have such a cool grandparent! "The Landslide," as the capsule summary above perhaps suggests, tells a simple story, yet it is one that culminates with a profoundly moving ending. The book would surely be a perfect fit for a younger audience, say 13 and up, despite the occasional slang term ("marlies," anyone?) and a few words that might send the younger readers off to the dictionary, such as "curragh" and "poteen." (And yes, I did indeed require a dictionary for those two myself!) The thought strikes me that "The Landslide" might also be a suitable basis for an animated film, such as one from Pixar here in the U.S. or--even better--Studio Ghibli in Japan. Gilbert's novel grows increasingly dark and grim as it progresses, and that moving ending that I alluded to is a surprisingly downbeat one. Still, I do think it one that a YA audience might easily handle, be it read on a page or watched on the big screen. The book concludes the only way it really could have and yet not in the manner one might expect, and Gilbert's determination to not provide a sappy ending is to be commended.
The author also showed great imagination in the variety of outlandish creatures that Wolfe and Gran'papa observe or meet. Let's see: there's an eight-foot-high flower with a blue eye in its center, a 30-foot-long caterpillar, a half lizard-half rock critter, crimson scorpions, squirrel-sized hornets, bright-red reptiles, and the bright-green Procyon...not to mention the Dragon and the Sea Serpent. Thank goodness, all of these life-forms are gentle and well mannered! And the Dragon and the Sea Serpent, credibly enough, are even shown to be flawed creatures: The Dragon has a well-controlled violent streak that does manage to emerge on occasion, while the Sea Serpent is shown to be something of a tempter when he tries to lure Wolfe to depart with him to foreign, warmer shores. As for the book's secondary, human characters, they are unfailingly well drawn, be it Wolfe's stern but loving mother, his weak but sympathetic father, or the morally conflicted yet ultimately decent Father Binyon. One curious aspect in Gilbert's book is the fact that the ordinary animals of today become both telepathic and peaceful in the presence of the Dragon, leading to the remarkable scene in which former enemies--cats, dogs, mice, foxes--sit together and have a nonverbal conversation that we are privy to. As Gran'papa tells us, all animals were probably once telepathic, but their instrument controlling the power has grown rusty over time. How the Dragon reasserts the old ability in both men and other animals, while at the same time engendering a feeling of brotherhood (amongst the four-legged creatures, at least), is never satisfactorily explained.
As might be expected, Gilbert provides his readers with any number of well-done scenes and set pieces. Among them: Wolfe's discovery of the newly emerged primeval forest, with all its previously unseen wonders; Wolfe's ride on top of the Sea Serpent, as he zips over the waves; the locals' discovery of the Dragon sleeping in their church, with the resultant exorcism and attempted stoning; the mob's attempts to kill Procyon and, later, Gran'papa; that remarkable back-and-forth conversation between all the animals; the thrilling sequence in which a mob attacks the encampment at Far Shore and is beaten back by an army of cats, dogs, scorpions, mice, bulls, snakes, insects and horses; and finally, the scenes in which the early-winter weather begins to take a ruinous toll.
Gilbert's book, if I haven't made it clear before now, is beautifully written, employing simple yet compulsively readable language. Take, for example, what Gran'papa thinks out loud as he and Wolfe prepare to explore the area of the landslide:
"...What is round that corner? Something as strange as the Sirens. It may be a Gorgon or a Cyclops. When we go round there we shall return to the age of adventure--the age of Scylla and Charybdis. Ever since that age there has been nothing strange, or mysterious, or inexplicable, in the whole world. Everything has been cleared up and solved and explained, and now, by just going round a corner, we can step back thousands and thousands and thousands of years...."
And my goodness, how many words of wisdom and moments of profound insight are to be had here! You'll surely feel compelled to take a highlighter to some of them. Thus, Gran'papa says of Father Binyon "The truth doesn't matter to him, nor to the Church. It's the attitude they think about, and I know what that'll be...." Regarding the prehistoric humans, Gran'papa opines "Man was the worst of the animals then, but isn't he still?" Or, as the Dragon puts it, "When I lived before, Man was not the greatest of the beasts. We were the greatest; but we did not oppress the other animals, nor molest them in any way. It surprises me that Man has been allowed to do what he has done." As Gran'papa tells the Dragon about modern-day cats, "They are the strangest and most unaccountable of all creatures." And he expresses his opinion of the superstitious villagers thus: "Anything they don't understand they think is wrong--and there's very little they do understand." And as the well-meaning Father Binyon at one point declares, "...to avoid hurting people's feelings is one of the most difficult things in life. But also one of the most important...." And so many dozens more. The book is fairly priceless in that regard...simply written but full of meaning and wonderful nuggets of truth.
But getting back to that instance of serendipity that I mentioned up top, I am actually quite happy to have read "The Spring Song" and "The Landslide" back to back. Putting aside the common thread of Forrest Reid, the two books also share some other similarities. Both are set in rural Ireland, both feature young boys (Grif Weston, the main lead in Reid's book, is 13, while Wolfe here, again, is 12) and their sweet relationship with a grandfather, both feature an adventure that transpires over the course of a long summer, both feature hints (well, more than hints, in the Gilbert book) of a hidden world that exists just outside of our range of perception, both feature a dog or doglike creature very much in peril, and both come fully loaded with a superabundance of charm. So yes, the two books do manage to complement one another very nicely, as things turn out.
I did have a few small problems with Gilbert's first novel that prevents me from giving it a perfect grade, however. For one thing, some of his descriptions of the geographical terrain in the vicinity of Wolfe's cottage were very hard for me to envision. Wolfe lives atop a hill overlooking the local village, which itself seems to lie above (?) an inlet where the fishermen's dock is. Meanwhile, on another side of the hill lies the way to the landslide above the Far Shore, and...oh, never mind. I did my best at visualizing the area, although whether or not my mental pictures tallied with what the author intended is another story. More problematic for this reader, however, was the explanation for how the Dragon and the other prehistoric animals managed to emerge, whole and living, into our world and time. At one point it is suggested that they had all somehow entered into an eons-long hibernation of sorts, only to be awoken by that landslide on page 1 of the book. But Gilbert muddies the issue when the Dragon allows Wolfe to see the last images that he can remember before being reborn...images of earthquake, volcano, tidal wave and general destruction. So were the animals all caught in a cataclysm of some kind, putting them into a comatose state that endured for millennia? It's impossible to know. (Perhaps this is why the Dragon can only call their advent in our modern world "a strange accident.") And even if this is indeed the case, how do we then explain the survival and emergence of the ocean-dwelling Sea Serpent, who shouldn't have been affected by a local landslide anyway? A little more explanation would have been appreciated...by this reader, anyway. Personally, I would've been content with a hidden world of prehistoric creatures living beneath the modern-day Irish soil, and unearthed by a week of heavy rain. That would have sufficed for me...putting aside for the moment the matter of the Sea Serpent. But these are mere quibbles. At bottom, I cannot imagine anyone not being both entertained and (here comes that unavoidable word again!) charmed by Gilbert's work here. It is, simply put, a splendid first novel, and I greatly look forward to reading "Monkeyface" next....
(By the way, this review originally appeared on the FanLit website at https://fantasyliterature.com/ ... a most ideal destination for all fans of charming fantasies such as this....)
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