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Llandor Trilogy #1
Journey Through Llandor
When Roderick falls down a hill after being chased by two sixth-formers - bullies Carrie and Craig - he doesn't realise that he and his pursuers have fallen into a different world.
256 pages, Paperback
First published July 10, 1995
About the author
Louise Lawrence
40 books58 followersElizabeth Holden, better known by her pen name Louise Lawrence, is an English science fiction author, acclaimed during the 1970s and 1980s.
Lawrence was born in Leatherhead, Surrey, England, in 1943. She became fascinated with Wales at a young age, and has set many of her novels there. She left school early on to become an assistant librarian. She married and had the first of her three children in 1963. Her departure from the library, she recalls, gave her the potential to turn toward writing: "Deprived of book-filled surroundings, I was bound to write my own."
Lawrence was born in Leatherhead, Surrey, England, in 1943. She became fascinated with Wales at a young age, and has set many of her novels there. She left school early on to become an assistant librarian. She married and had the first of her three children in 1963. Her departure from the library, she recalls, gave her the potential to turn toward writing: "Deprived of book-filled surroundings, I was bound to write my own."
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
July 4, 2012
I read this book when I was a teenager. I found it in one of my many library visits and it's always stuck with me. Not because of it's story, I barely remembered the plot at all (other than 'three Earth teenagers get transposed to Another World', which happens in Chapter 1, I drew a blank). It was the fact that I'd only managed to find the first two books in the library and I knew there was 1 more in the trilogy that they didn't have. Being a completist, I'd always wanted to re-read it, and finally read the last book, so I found them all online, 2nd hand, and bought them.
It's an odd book, that clearly draws a lot from Lord of the Rings. It even references the fact in the first chapter. Ent-like sentient trees; elves and dwarfs; elves sailing to 'the Blessed Lands' instead of dying; Kadmon being some kind of Aragorn/Gandalf hybrid; wraiths and goblins; as well as other things I'm forgetting. But more than the little things, the thing it owes most to LoTR is the theme of how our post-Industrial Revolution world is bad for the world and us in it. The writing is not brilliant, and at times the English in it is plain odd. The plot is quite breezy and moves along fairly quickly. The third person narrative switches every few chapters so that the story is told from the POV of all the three teenagers, so it's their story/journey, rather than just the story/journey of one of them. Characters die, but I can't say that I really cared as I wasn't too emotionally invested in any of them (). The deaths were nice and gory though, didn't hold anything back for a teen book that was written in the 90s.
Overall though, it seems less a story is being told and more a morality tale about the evil things Man has done to the world and each other. It's not great, but it's not terrible. I'm certainly going to read the other two though, because that was the whole point of getting them.
It's an odd book, that clearly draws a lot from Lord of the Rings. It even references the fact in the first chapter. Ent-like sentient trees; elves and dwarfs; elves sailing to 'the Blessed Lands' instead of dying; Kadmon being some kind of Aragorn/Gandalf hybrid; wraiths and goblins; as well as other things I'm forgetting. But more than the little things, the thing it owes most to LoTR is the theme of how our post-Industrial Revolution world is bad for the world and us in it. The writing is not brilliant, and at times the English in it is plain odd. The plot is quite breezy and moves along fairly quickly. The third person narrative switches every few chapters so that the story is told from the POV of all the three teenagers, so it's their story/journey, rather than just the story/journey of one of them. Characters die, but I can't say that I really cared as I wasn't too emotionally invested in any of them (). The deaths were nice and gory though, didn't hold anything back for a teen book that was written in the 90s.
Overall though, it seems less a story is being told and more a morality tale about the evil things Man has done to the world and each other. It's not great, but it's not terrible. I'm certainly going to read the other two though, because that was the whole point of getting them.
January 14, 2019
Loved the author s previous book
I enjoyed this book but think I am too old
The story line is excellent and very easy to read
I enjoyed this book but think I am too old
The story line is excellent and very easy to read
February 13, 2022
I really enjoyed Lawrence’s Children of Dust, so perhaps I went into Journey Through Llandor with unrealistically high expectations.
A mid-90s children’s fantasy, the action canters on at a great pace but the character work just isn’t there. It’s a big cast of characters too, making this even more of a slog. If you have childhood nostalgia for the series I can see this evoking those fond memories of adventure, but coming to it as a new reader I just failed to get into it at all.
One of our protagonists is overweight and his main (and seemingly only!) character feature is that he’s fat. Fat is thrown in so many times at the start you could honestly make it into a drinking game. Spoiler alert - he gets severely ill, sheds his extra pounds and is now a seemingly-flawless hero with none of the emotional issues that had led to his unhealthy relationship with food. Our female protagonist, from bully to damsel in distress to bully again, we’re supposed to suddenly like as she gets stuck in helping with the household chores... I appreciate the 90s were a different time, but there are so many of my own childhood favourites from then that didn’t handle their characters so sloppily and still hold up on re-reading today.
The sample chapter for the next book - which is the one on my course syllabus so I’m going to have to grit my teeth and continue on with - at the end did not bode well. You’d like to think it would have been checked before being tacked on as a sample, but apparently not as it was brimming with basic errors (waiths instead of wraiths, sitll winter, depe snow, th eknowledge, etc).
If this is an old favourite I’m so happy you can re-visit Llandor. Llandor is an interesting world, I’m definitely here for the Kelpie and the goblin societies... But there’s very little else I can recommend here.
A mid-90s children’s fantasy, the action canters on at a great pace but the character work just isn’t there. It’s a big cast of characters too, making this even more of a slog. If you have childhood nostalgia for the series I can see this evoking those fond memories of adventure, but coming to it as a new reader I just failed to get into it at all.
One of our protagonists is overweight and his main (and seemingly only!) character feature is that he’s fat. Fat is thrown in so many times at the start you could honestly make it into a drinking game. Spoiler alert - he gets severely ill, sheds his extra pounds and is now a seemingly-flawless hero with none of the emotional issues that had led to his unhealthy relationship with food. Our female protagonist, from bully to damsel in distress to bully again, we’re supposed to suddenly like as she gets stuck in helping with the household chores... I appreciate the 90s were a different time, but there are so many of my own childhood favourites from then that didn’t handle their characters so sloppily and still hold up on re-reading today.
The sample chapter for the next book - which is the one on my course syllabus so I’m going to have to grit my teeth and continue on with - at the end did not bode well. You’d like to think it would have been checked before being tacked on as a sample, but apparently not as it was brimming with basic errors (waiths instead of wraiths, sitll winter, depe snow, th eknowledge, etc).
If this is an old favourite I’m so happy you can re-visit Llandor. Llandor is an interesting world, I’m definitely here for the Kelpie and the goblin societies... But there’s very little else I can recommend here.
March 10, 2016
I have a mixed reaction to this first volume in a fantasy trilogy. Firstly, the readership is unclear compared to the previous three books by Louise Lawrence that I've read, all of which were clearly YA and had at least some inclusion of boy-girl relationships. Despite a description on the hardback edition, the children do not come across as six formers at school (from the older school organisation used in the UK; lower 6th would be for 16-17 year olds, upper for 17-18 years). Instead, I thought they were about 14 at most. Towards the end of the story, there is some hint that a couple of them are starting to have feelings for the others, but only adult inhabitants of the fantasy land are seen to have relationships and the general level of squabbling that goes on also leads me to see the children as younger.
Secondly, the book foregrounds behaviour and attitudes which I'm not sure would be accepted in a book being submitted for publication now. One of the three main characters - the children who are drawn into the other parallel world called Llandor - is Roderick, a boy who is defined by his size. He is about five stone overweight (judging by how much weight he later loses) and is also shown as cowardly and whiny, although the book starts off in his viewpoint for the first two chapters so we do have some sympathy for him, especially as he does go back and save one of the children who are chasing him, Carrie, when she is grabbed by a hostile sentient tree during the incident that opens the story. At first, Roderick is stereotypically 'greedy' - when they first set off on their long journey, he eats far too much of the rations he is carrying which are meant to last six days. But the other characters at that point are treating him outrageously; setting a pace that he can't maintain and leaving him alone in the woods to follow as best he can, then sending a tame wolf back each evening to drive him to their camp! During the story, he becomes very ill (though it is not really explained how), loses a lot of weight, and once he is slimmed down, starts to become a slightly heroic character, at which point Carrie changes her attitudes towards him dramatically. Given the large number of obese or overweight children and young people these days, I'm not sure this would go down well with the target readership.
The story is told from the viewpoints of the three children from our world, with two chapters at a time in each, from each character in turn and repeating. The basic tale is a classic quest, though not to find or get rid of anything, but instead to try to get the three children to a safe haven away from the dangers besetting them. There is an equivalent of the land of Mordor where goblins and other creatures live and are often enslaved and made to work in mines etc. The level of technology is around early medieval with water mills and windmills, and with horse/cart transport or barges and punts on the rivers. The ruler of the northern land of Mordican is the baddie who is apparently sending his minions after the children, and they conclude as the first book ends that he is after the technological knowledge from their world which he could use to extend his rule.
Llandor is inhabited by various races: Elves in the west, dwarves in the north, and humans dotted around in different places, some of whom at least are descendants from those who arrived accidentally from our world in the past. One of the main characters who help the children is a Welsh man who has been there since 1960 (only five years of Llandor time have passed while it is 1994 in the world the children have come from). Others who help are Elves or part Elves who live outside the Elves' homeland, and a dwarf, plus a mage who is a sort of amalgamation of Aragorn and Gandalf from Lord of the Rings, but with the added element that he is a 'dark' mage and is viewed with a lot of suspicion to begin with. There are baddies such as goblins, nixies (water spirits) and water horses, plus wraith ghosts, so there is an Irish/Celtic/Northern England element in the story also.
A main element of the story is the ecological theme which crystalises into a philosophical conflict between Craig and Carrie, his former friend. Craig is the other child who bullied Roderick and was chasing him at the start. As the story progresses, he comes to hate Llandor and everything in it, more and more. He loves computer games and had his whole life mapped out as a highly paid computer engineer with two homes and a posh car, which has been snatched away by being trapped in Llandor. Carrie and Roderick by contrast grow to love the country with its unspoiled nature and the caring attitude of most of the people, who live a completely natural life (though the hard work aspect of that is not totally airbrushed). Carrie in particular opposes Craig who wants to introduce roads, telephones, hamburger bars and supermarkets among other things.
The similarities to LOTR (though not to Narnia which also has elements 'borrowed' - children who go through a doorway to a world where time proceeds at a different pace, though in Llandor it goes slower than our world) are acknowledged early on in the story when the children discuss how the tree that attacked them was like a hostile ent from LOTR. That helps to divert that criticism I suppose.
I did find a few things in the story somewhat odd and either plot holes or things the writer forgot to resolve
Secondly, the book foregrounds behaviour and attitudes which I'm not sure would be accepted in a book being submitted for publication now. One of the three main characters - the children who are drawn into the other parallel world called Llandor - is Roderick, a boy who is defined by his size. He is about five stone overweight (judging by how much weight he later loses) and is also shown as cowardly and whiny, although the book starts off in his viewpoint for the first two chapters so we do have some sympathy for him, especially as he does go back and save one of the children who are chasing him, Carrie, when she is grabbed by a hostile sentient tree during the incident that opens the story. At first, Roderick is stereotypically 'greedy' - when they first set off on their long journey, he eats far too much of the rations he is carrying which are meant to last six days. But the other characters at that point are treating him outrageously; setting a pace that he can't maintain and leaving him alone in the woods to follow as best he can, then sending a tame wolf back each evening to drive him to their camp! During the story, he becomes very ill (though it is not really explained how), loses a lot of weight, and once he is slimmed down, starts to become a slightly heroic character, at which point Carrie changes her attitudes towards him dramatically. Given the large number of obese or overweight children and young people these days, I'm not sure this would go down well with the target readership.
The story is told from the viewpoints of the three children from our world, with two chapters at a time in each, from each character in turn and repeating. The basic tale is a classic quest, though not to find or get rid of anything, but instead to try to get the three children to a safe haven away from the dangers besetting them. There is an equivalent of the land of Mordor where goblins and other creatures live and are often enslaved and made to work in mines etc. The level of technology is around early medieval with water mills and windmills, and with horse/cart transport or barges and punts on the rivers. The ruler of the northern land of Mordican is the baddie who is apparently sending his minions after the children, and they conclude as the first book ends that he is after the technological knowledge from their world which he could use to extend his rule.
Llandor is inhabited by various races: Elves in the west, dwarves in the north, and humans dotted around in different places, some of whom at least are descendants from those who arrived accidentally from our world in the past. One of the main characters who help the children is a Welsh man who has been there since 1960 (only five years of Llandor time have passed while it is 1994 in the world the children have come from). Others who help are Elves or part Elves who live outside the Elves' homeland, and a dwarf, plus a mage who is a sort of amalgamation of Aragorn and Gandalf from Lord of the Rings, but with the added element that he is a 'dark' mage and is viewed with a lot of suspicion to begin with. There are baddies such as goblins, nixies (water spirits) and water horses, plus wraith ghosts, so there is an Irish/Celtic/Northern England element in the story also.
A main element of the story is the ecological theme which crystalises into a philosophical conflict between Craig and Carrie, his former friend. Craig is the other child who bullied Roderick and was chasing him at the start. As the story progresses, he comes to hate Llandor and everything in it, more and more. He loves computer games and had his whole life mapped out as a highly paid computer engineer with two homes and a posh car, which has been snatched away by being trapped in Llandor. Carrie and Roderick by contrast grow to love the country with its unspoiled nature and the caring attitude of most of the people, who live a completely natural life (though the hard work aspect of that is not totally airbrushed). Carrie in particular opposes Craig who wants to introduce roads, telephones, hamburger bars and supermarkets among other things.
The similarities to LOTR (though not to Narnia which also has elements 'borrowed' - children who go through a doorway to a world where time proceeds at a different pace, though in Llandor it goes slower than our world) are acknowledged early on in the story when the children discuss how the tree that attacked them was like a hostile ent from LOTR. That helps to divert that criticism I suppose.
I did find a few things in the story somewhat odd and either plot holes or things the writer forgot to resolve
May 12, 2018
Like a lot of others, I first read this book when I was a young teenager. I remember really loving it (so much so that I ran a Yahoo group dedicated to it back in the day!) but couldn't really remember many of the details, including the name of it. I tracked it down recently to see if it would stand up to a re-read - and was pleasantly surprised.
It's a super short story, with quick world-building that's self-aware and referential. The evocation of small-town England at the start (and as a comparison throughout) is terse and familiar and sort of affectionately, depressingly accurate - and nicely compared to the lush, adoring language with which Lawrence describes Llandor itself. The characters are well-differentiated and evolve throughout the narrative, though there are a couple of quirks here and there (Roderick goes to bed in one paragraph and the next is suddenly deathly ill, with no real exposition?) which stand out more as an older reader.
Mostly this novel surprised me with how much I did remember, when I re-read it. Gwillym the Mapper, Festy, Umla, the woman who asks about the Black and Tans. Kadmon, who I definitely had a teenaged crush on. It really stayed with me and it's definitely still a really nicely structured, straightforward, YA fantasy novel. I'm really glad I tracked it down.
It's a super short story, with quick world-building that's self-aware and referential. The evocation of small-town England at the start (and as a comparison throughout) is terse and familiar and sort of affectionately, depressingly accurate - and nicely compared to the lush, adoring language with which Lawrence describes Llandor itself. The characters are well-differentiated and evolve throughout the narrative, though there are a couple of quirks here and there (Roderick goes to bed in one paragraph and the next is suddenly deathly ill, with no real exposition?) which stand out more as an older reader.
Mostly this novel surprised me with how much I did remember, when I re-read it. Gwillym the Mapper, Festy, Umla, the woman who asks about the Black and Tans. Kadmon, who I definitely had a teenaged crush on. It really stayed with me and it's definitely still a really nicely structured, straightforward, YA fantasy novel. I'm really glad I tracked it down.
February 19, 2021
I borrowed this book from the high school library many years ago because it looked pretty exciting. Here's what I remember (beware of vague spoilers that may in fact be incorrect):
* Two bullies (a boy and a girl) chase an overweight boy into a fantasy world - our protagonists, everybody;
* They encounter a guy who was probably also from their world but has been here so long he now has a daughter;
* Guy also had some large wolves/dogs, which had perked my interest;
* As the adventure continued, the overweight boy shed his weight whereas his bullies floundered;
* I was upset when the number of wolves/dogs reduced as the adventure continued;
* the daughter called out to the returned "Festy" but Festy was acting like a stranger and hanging out with some other guy now;
* My friends would constantly ask how "L-l-l-l-landor" was going.
For the life of me, I don't recall if I actually finished this book (I likely did finish but just didn't connect with the story). I was content while reading this but I never read the sequels. Unfortunately this wasn't the book for me.
* Two bullies (a boy and a girl) chase an overweight boy into a fantasy world - our protagonists, everybody;
* They encounter a guy who was probably also from their world but has been here so long he now has a daughter;
* Guy also had some large wolves/dogs, which had perked my interest;
* As the adventure continued, the overweight boy shed his weight whereas his bullies floundered;
* I was upset when the number of wolves/dogs reduced as the adventure continued;
* the daughter called out to the returned "Festy" but Festy was acting like a stranger and hanging out with some other guy now;
* My friends would constantly ask how "L-l-l-l-landor" was going.
For the life of me, I don't recall if I actually finished this book (I likely did finish but just didn't connect with the story). I was content while reading this but I never read the sequels. Unfortunately this wasn't the book for me.
November 2, 2024
lovely and dazzling!!!!
January 7, 2009
Disappointing as some of Lawrence's stories are profound. I found the characters odd and the story strange. It doesn't resolve at the end of no 3 so there must be more.
December 10, 2008
Forgettable.
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