The Children of Ashgaroth

by Richard Ford

Genres: Fantasy

Hardcover

First published October 9, 1986

About the author

Richard Ford lives and writes in the remote wilds of the English Peak District with his wife Claire and their dog Gyp. His first novel, Quest for the Faradawn was published in 1982, became an international best seller and rapidly acquired the status of a cult classic. The other two books in the Faradawn trilogy, Melvaig’s Vision and Children of Ashgaroth were also best sellers. After leaving his day job as a lawyer in 1999 he immersed himself in writing and in playing, writing and performing music and has released three critically acclaimed albums of his own songs, Smoke and Mirrors, Still & Voices. Currently Richard (or Rick when he is a musician!) is working on his fourth album Across the Border, to be released in 2017 and a new novel.
To find out more about Richard Ford’s books and to listen to Rick’s music and songs please visit www.rickfordsongwriter.com

Reviews

[Len · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love a fantasy novel that wants to be browbeatingly serious but ends up as a chuckle worthy send up of its own purpose. Man, it is always man in this book, women are usually either victims or objects of sexual temptation, is the evil creation of Dreagg with total power over all the rest of creation as its ultimate ambition. Only the natural world of animals and plants, the elves and a few of the humans of Haark - Ashgaroth's demi-paradise - oppose the growing flood of evil. There may be hints of Tolkien in the story, the great battle between good and evil to determine the fate of the world, but it reminded me more of Terry Brooks' Shannara stories. So many meaningless names for people and things pulled out of thin air: the tapestries of Tainoor, Ammdar's legendary sword "fashioned with ore from the sacred mines of Smoo," and the pipe of Morar which can summon the elves into battle. Much posturing among the bad guys with occasional pronouncements to emphasise they are playing in an epic.

My own favourite comes at the end of Chapter 18 when Barll "gave his voice a harsh and breathy resonance and set his nostrils flaring. 'Now it is starting. Now our time begins. Go, Straygoth. Follow the goblins and let us hurry to Gan.'"

The violence, and there is a good deal of it, can be sadistic but it is so overdrawn that the most savage episodes have the humour of desperate exaggeration. Near the beginning when Barll takes over Haark for Dreagg he orders that two elderly statesmen, Stowna and Nemm, should die at the hands of the children, and the author means literally at the hands of the children. There follows a disgusting description of two men being dismembered limb from limb by a gang of pre-pubescent "little ones". It really is disgusting and goes on for three and a half blood-soaked pages better suited to a Penny Dreadful, and it is that lack of reality which saves it and turns it into something squeamishly funny. Against that is the genuinely, if accidentally, hilarious battle against the giant lobster lurking in the moat surrounding Degg's hideaway castle. It is meant to be horrifying but I am still laughing at the memory of it. It is like a third rate Godzilla rip-off.

All told, not a great fantasy novel. The prose is lumberingly slow, mainly because there is so little dialogue hidden in very long descriptions and repetitive back stories. The characters are one dimensional heroes, villains or traitors and what dialogue there is stumbles across as heroically tiresome. I would recommend Tolkien.

[Carole-Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a paperback edition by Grafton from February 1988