The Greenstone Grail

The Sangreal Trilogy #1

by Amanda Hemingway

The first book in a brand new trilogy from the author of Prospero’s Children.

Bartlemy Goodman, is one of the Gifted. An albino of Greek parentage, he was born in Byzantium amidst the decline of the Roman Empire. He now resides at Thornyhill house, England, with his dog, Hoover.

One warm evening, a young homeless woman holding a baby turns up on Bartlemy's doorstep, and sensing destiny at work, he lets them stay. Annie and her son Nathan thrive in the small community of Thornyhill, but when more strangers arrive in the village, sinister happenings begin to occur.

Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult, Fiction, Magic, Science Fiction, Adventure, Science Fiction Fantasy

369 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 1, 2005

About the author

She has also written under the pseudonyms of Jan Siegel, and Jemma Harvey.

Reviews

[Silvio Curtis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first book of the Sangreal Trilogy. It sounded like it might be something like the Dark is Rising Sequence, but it wasn't. It's not Arthurian, either, though the name of the series might make it sound that way. Of the books I've read, it probably has the most in common with the His Dark Materials trilogy, since it involves multiple universes and straddles the traditional boundary between "children's" and "adult" themes in kind of the same way. It's more of a mystery than an adventure story, with a relatively small amount of world-building. The story is told sometimes from the point of view of Nathan, a thirteen-year-old who enters other universes in his dreams, and sometimes from that of his mother.

Where science comes into the picture, it's often vague or inaccurate. For instance, they try to carbon-date the grail, which is made of stone.

[Tanya · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Dark-Draco · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had read so many great reviews of this book, that I was really looking forward to reading it. Maybe my expectations were too high as a result, but I was curiously disappointed not to be blown away by it. I also hadn't realised that it was a YA book, which became very obvious by the tone and writing style of the book...and I very nearly put it down again. But I am glad I continued as it was enjoyable, for all its faults.

The story starts off with a young mother and her child being driven towards a grand old house by whispering shadows. Years pass and the child grows up to find he has the power to travel to different universes and, unintentionally, bring things back with him. One of these universes is dying, but a Great Spell (note the capitals!) can safe everyone, if only the Cup, Sword and Crown can be brought together. Coincidently, a local legend tells of a mysterious, cursed, cup of blood that was lost centuries ago by the ruling family of the area. Oh, and a strange cup has just come up for sale at Sootheby's....

Actually, the story has a lot more depth than that. There are some nice twists, although they weren't a massive surprise, and the characters were brought to life very well. A lot is left open for the next two books in the series, which I would probably read if I came across them, but wouldn't necessarily go running out to buy them.

So, overall, a good YA book that I'm sure would be loved by a lot of readers in that age group, but for me, it lacked some of the depth I really want in my fantasy.

[Amanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was an interesting mix of ancient legend and multiverse theory. Think Ray Bradbury meets Arthurian legend. Nathan Ward is a young boy of mysterious beginnings who discovers a grail that whispers and various strange creatures that are real-in his dreams and in his world. With his best friend Hazel, his mother Annie, and his Uncle Bartlemy, he sets off to discover the reason for this grail being in his world and the reason why there are new dangers everywhere he turns. While the premise is a good one, the characters fall a little flat. They are not very personal, the only one who has any sort of presence or personality is Bartlemy, but the wise sage is not a hard character to establish. The pacing of this book was very slow; it took a long time to build up to a conflict and definitely lacked momentum. In fact, that is my chief complaint. The pacing really ruined the story. What should have been an exciting and suspenseful wasn't, although I will give the author credit for interesting concepts, but the execution was lacking.

[Regina Sanchez Durst · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although I am a big Potter fan, I consider this to be one of my most favorite series of all. A trilogy, the reader follows the protagonist, Nathan, into alternate universes as he dreams. This novel raises several questions in me, and one for example is: "Is there really a possibility of alternate universes?"
Not only does this book lead me to think of such topics as that, but also Amanda Hemingway takes the science-fiction idea of human/extraterrestrial interaction and the religious Holy Grail and melds it together into one thrilling plot.

[Sujuelf_heeshin · Rating 5 out of 5]

that story is really awesome.. I don't actually feel I'm reading this book but instead I feel like I was really in the scene.. a very nice plot in this book.. I really love it.. I had finished it already but I could still feel its story within me, everyday I was looking for it.. the story is just too great.. love Amanda Hemingway!! The ending is really nice too, i was really satisfied to it, It feels complete - the ending - but when I found out there is a next book that's the time I felt "it" was incomplete. then, suddenly I saw myself longing for its next book. I was like crazy until now looking for the next book!! yeah.. GREAT!! love it.. =)

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Science Fiction/Fantasy. I really enjoyed this trilogy (this being the first of the three). A woman turns up with baby in her arms at the doorstep of an elderly gentleman. He isn't surprised at their appearance late in the evening. The reader discovers that the child is not completely of this world, he was conceived in another universe. When he is about pre-teen age he starts travelling to other universes when he dreams. He has a mission to accomplish, however does not fully realize this until farther along in the series. It is fast paced, held my attention throughout.

[Amanda R · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book and am looking forward to the rest in the trilogy. A boy has the ability to travel to different worlds through his dreams and he discovers a dying planet named Eos. Because of corruption, magic got out of hand and poisoned the planet and (I believe) others as well. So it's up to Nathan to find 3 objects - a grail, a sword, and a crown - so that a Great Spell can be performed, healing the planet.

It was a fun story and I loved the Eos parts!

[Angie · Rating 5 out of 5]

WOW-WOHOW! where i have been all htis time that this aMAZing book has been sitting on my shelves?!?! and there are two more books in the trilogy that have been in print since 2007! this is Triskellion 1 & 2 on steroids, and takes fantazy and science fiction and rolls them up beautifully into one uber-genre. how many other books are out there giving an interplanetary spin on all our ancient myths of magic and mystery?! i want to read them.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought this book was a very good blend of science fiction and urban fantasy, which I found kind of surprising that it could be possible to blend them together...and do it well. I found the characters very interesting, and the plot was well developed. There were even elements of mystery at the end. It was a really good book; I enjoyed every minute of it.

[JJ DeBenedictis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a wonderful book! It's well-written and has a good pace. The characters are likeable and fully-fleshed out, and although I think this would really appeal to young adult readers, I liked it a great deal and it did not suffer from "hapless adult" syndrome, i.e. the adult characters were as interesting as the child protagonist.

[Vicki · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautifully written and compelling mixture of fantasy and science fiction, I couldn't put this down. I found it a refreshingly novel storyline after having read so much formulaic fantasy and can't wait to read the rest of the trilogy.

[Stephen Hayes · Rating 4 out of 5]

A strange mixture of fantasy and science fiction, with an eclectic mix of tropes from both.

Annie Ward arrives at the house of Bartlemy Goodman with her young son Nathan, pursued, or perhaps herded by invisible forces. Bartlemy gives her a job in the nearby town of Eade running his second-hand bookshop, and she and Nathan live in an attached flat. When he is 12, Nathan discovers, or is shown, again by mysterious invisible forces, a stone chalice, the sangreal, which he is initially reluctant to talk about with anyone else, not even his close friends Hazel and George. Then he begins having dreams of travel to a dying world in another universe, which, it seems, the stone chalice is destined to save somehow.

I quite enjoyed reading it, but not enough to make me want to read its sequel. I found it a bit too eclectic, and would probably have enjoyed it more if it had stuck to one genre or the other. The dying universe of Nathan's dreams could have been left out without weakening the story, and leaving it out would probably had strengthened it.

[Juan Sanmiguel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Years ago Annie Ward gave birth to a son Nathan. Annie and Nathan live in a small English village. Annie runs a bookstore for a mysterious man named Bartlemy. Bartlemy is very good to Nathan and Annie. As Nathan grows older he starts having odd dreams. Dreams of an incredible world of flying dinosaurs and of a kingdom on the brink of disaster. He soon is able to move into this dream. This world seems to be connected to a grail that once belong to a local family and has been found again. Can this be the part of key to save this world. This is great. Hemingway is writing an incredible fantasy. I like when they make references to other fantasies like Harry Potter and Narnia. This is part of a trilogy. I am eagerly awaiting the next installment.

[Lyssa F · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting concept.

The beginning was slow but pick up near the end. The characters were believable and the story line was good and different from other kinds of books I've read. This story doesn't give many answers I was looking for and so you'll have to read the next two books.

[Marsha Valance · Rating 3 out of 5]

A young boy of mysterious parentage walks between worlds in his sleep to retrieve the stolen sangraal.

[Beverly Fuqua · Rating 3 out of 5]

For a YA book this was pretty good. I'm not too old to read an interesting story just because some of the main characters are teenagers, after all, I loved Harry Potter. There wasn't any teenage angst in it, which kind of made it a little unrealistic; these kids were entirely too well-adjusted to be real! But I liked it enough to read the next one.

[Sandra Gallegos · Rating 2 out of 5]

No sé muy bien qué pensar de este libro porque, aunque no era aburrido, tampoco me interesó lo suficiente como para terminarlo.

Antes que nada he de decir que, por lo visto, se trata de una segunda parte, cosa que no aparece señalada en ninguna parte de la novela, así que empezamos bien. De todas formas yo allá que fui, a ver qué le pasaba al protagonista, que vivía en una especie de mundo futurista, pero con toques medievales.

Es decir, él parecía vivir en una época bastante parecida a la actual, en la que hay mucha magia que podría decirse que recuerda a la Edad Media. Además, el chico tiene unos sueños que lo trasladan a otro mundo, el cual sí que es más bien medieval, en el que hay una princesa que necesita ayuda. Ocurren más cosas en la novela, hay más personajes y tramas, pero eso fue básicamente de lo que me enteré.

Siendo sincera, es por esto por lo que no sé qué opinar. Las partes de los demás personajes (la madre del prota, la mejor amiga del prota, el anciano que se menciona en la sinopsis) me aburrían tantísimo que hacía lectura diagonal, porque es que no llegaban a atraparme, a interesarme tanto como para querer enterarme de lo que estaba pasando.

Las partes de los sueños del chico, por otro lado, sí que me gustaban y me las leía enteritas. Porque, a ver, la portada da a entender que se trata de una novela con tintes medievales, así que yo iba buscando una historia de ese estilo, con su magia, sus espadas y tal (además recordemos el título). Y eso solamente lo podía encontrar en los sueños del protagonista, así que eso fue lo poco que leí.

Sin embargo, no terminé el libro. Estuve unos días con él, pero ni siquiera la parte de la princesa en el mundo medieval me enganchó tanto como para querer acabar la novela. Lo cierto es que me apetecía una historia así, pero, al tener que intercalar lo que buscaba con otras partes que no me interesaban, se me acabó haciendo pesado y opté por abandonar este libro para ponerme con otro que me interesaba más.

Así que por eso no puedo opinar en condiciones sobre este libro. No sé cómo debería llamar a esto, entonces, porque está claro que no es ni una crítica, ni una reseña, pero es que tampoco es una opinión xD En fin, who cares.

[Andrew Ten broek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Didn´t find the opportunity to write some more about this novel before, just gave it a rating of 4 stars but I´ll do so now. I truly enjoyed this fantasy story and what made it better than the average one is, that Amanda Hemingway has written a character in it, Bartlemy, that is trying to explain some the magical occurences that happen throughout the story. Of course, nothing is as extensively explained as it would be in a science fiction novel, because otherwise it wouldn´t be a fantasy story anymore, but I thought giving general insights in why some things happened the way they did, added to a more well defined allround story.

The story starts off with Annie and her son fleeing the place they originally came from and ending up being taken cared of by Barlemy, who becomes an "uncle" of sorts to Nathan (the name of the son). Soon it becomes clear that Nathan is very unlike other young children and has the power to enter a different universe when he is dreaming. He can even pull off other beings from these universes into this universe in some ocassions when something special is occuring.

Parallel to this story there´s one Rowena Thorn that wants to buy back the Greenstone Grail that was property of her family before someone in her family sold it off to a businessman, eventhough the grail was unruly. That storyline becomes interwoven with some of the dreams that Nathan is having and also with a character Eric that becomes stranded in our universe.

The story never talks down to the reader, eventhough it could be read very well by young readers and keeps the reader guessing throughout the whole thing. Personally I´ve been listening to the audio version of it and hopefully I´ll be able to find the sequel on audio some time so I can continue the story when I´m driving to work.

[Anne Hamilton · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book specifically to see if it conformed to the pattern of grail stories that contain a Hickory Dickory Dock motif. And I was pleased to see that Hickory Dickory Dock is in fact quoted, though it leaves me none the wiser as to why these symbols recur together. I don't know what its significance is because it slips in and out without any explanation.

All it did was confirm to my mind that there is a link somewhere between the archetypal Mouse and the Grail.

I found the characters here much more appealing than I did in the Fern Capel books (which Hemingway wrote as Jan Siegel)and I really liked Bartlemy Goodman, the mysterious individual whose cooking is so sublime that it could woo Mossad and Hamas into sitting down at the same table and peaceably discussing their differences.

The main child protagonist of the story, Nathan, has been conceived in highly unusual circumstances — his mother, Annie Ward, has inadvertedly opened the Gate of Death. As Nathan grows up he is subject to disturbing nightmares of a world in a distant universe, so contaminated by sorcery that it is dying in a cesspool of magic. He also dreams of a greenstone grail, filled with blood, that has been placed on Earth for safe-keeping. The grail may be part of a plan to heal the ruined worlds — or it may just be a way of escape for the ruler of the distant world and his consort.

Nathan begins to realise his nightmares are actually transporting him physically into the world of dreams and it's getting harder to find his way home. Moreover there is a star watching over his house but whether it is for good or ill is not entirely clear.

Bring on the sequel!

[L.Y. Levand · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first reaction upon finishing this book was to think it truly was a wonderful book. Amanda Hemingway is a very talented author, and I look forward to reading more.

The Greenstone Grail sucks you in from the beginning, raising all sorts of questions that you discover you want answered as you go along. You are tossed into a situation you don't understand, with a cause that's not revealed until later. The mystery itself keeps your attention as you continue to read, and more mysteries present themselves.

About halfway through this book, I realized that it was based on a common cliche - but it's done in a different, and very absorbing, way. It is obviously only the first book in a series, and gives hints of things to come. It was very interesting all the way through, with a fresh (for me) way of expressing things. The writing style itself is reminiscent of Tolkien, while the story is contemporary and also seems to link to science fiction as well as fantasy.

There is some language that I disapprove of, but it is, for the most part, mild and very uncommon. Other than that, there was astonishingly little that I found objectionable, and I think that younger children would greatly enjoy it.

[Donna · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book had an interesting premise--Nathan, a modern day boy, dreams himself into another world--and not your typical fantasy world but an alternate universe where a planet is dying. Back in our universe there is an ancient grail, Nathan's mysterious parentage, a wise, centuries-old magic user, and creepy, invisible whispering spirits. These were all engaging.

The book started out strong and I was engrossed in the story. However, after a while it just began to drag. I liked the characters in our world but the author never made the alternate universe come alive at all. So little of the story happened there that I never felt connected to it; I just didn't care that the planet was dying. It was a 4 star book halfway through but ended up quite disappointing.

I listened to this as an audiobook read by Kyle McCarley who did a good job except for the character of Eric. He read him with a Russian accent which I found really distracting.

[Sara · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm having a hard time getting through this book... I think I may just give up and perhaps come back to it later. You would think that a short, easy, YA-type read like this would have an experienced reader like me flying through, but the story drags, the characters are without any real depth, and there are so many random elements coming in that it's somewhat hard to find it all believable. I normally have no problem buying into fantasy stories and fantasy worlds, but there's something about the random, abrupt way that these elements are brought into the story that makes them hard for me to swallow. I was hoping to find a fun, light, easy summer read, but it's just not holding my attention.

[Rae · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first in a trilogy featuring a young boy whose dreams are far too real--because they ARE real. He learns in his dreams about a dying world and then he must find the grail to begin the healing process. In the next two books (which I have not read), Nathan must find the crown and sword so that the spell of healing can be complete.

This story has all the flavor of Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising series. I enjoyed the characters and the setting but found the plot moved a little too slowly at times.

[Julie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am almost finished with this book. I checked out the trilogy from the library and it has barely kept me hanging on. I don't think that I will read the other two tho. The story just doesn't grab me enough.

[Regina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love how this is a mix of science and magic. Really puts together my two favorite subjects and weaves them seamlessly. I haven't met anyone who likes this book as much as I do, but I thought it was excellent storytelling.

[LOL_BOOKS]

ARTHURIANA, ESPECIALLY IF IT DOESN'T VILLIFY GUINEVERE AS BEING AN EVIL HARLOT.

THE GREENSTONE GRAIL OR THE CRYSTAL CAVE? LOL I HAVEN'T READ THE CRYSTAL CAVE, THOUGH, BUT MY FRAND LOVES IT AND SHE'S A GUINEVEREWIFE.

[SFReader · Rating 4 out of 5]

http://www.sfreader.com/read_review.a...

[Michael Hazard · Rating 3 out of 5]

harry potterish novel with boring finish.

[Katerina Capel]

wanna read =]