The Knot Garden Book

There must have been some suspense for Gabriel King while awaiting Richard Adams' verdict on King's earlier book The Wild Road. After all, Adams wrote the definitive animal-as-protagonist novel in Watership Down , and King's use of feline heroes is in similar vein. But to those who have read King's assured and charming fantasies, Adams' wholehearted recommendation comes as no surprise. All the magical atmosphere that made the earlier books such a delight are present in The Knot Garden. Here, the contrast between the human and feline characters is brilliantly sustained, but the real achievement lies in how anthropomorphic cuteness is always kept rigorously at bay: although cat lovers may pick up these books, others will find them equally pleasurable, as the King novels are too intelligent to ever fall into Disneyisms.In the quiet hamlet of Ashmore, life is tranquil and beautiful. Anna Prescott is recovering from a broken affair, and finds Ashmore the perfect place to de-stress. But Anna is unwittingly to become the instrument of chaos for the village. For Ashmore is actually at an intersection of the Wild Roads, a mystical area that exists in a time and dimension limbo. The cats who are masters of the highway are charged with fathoming the mysteries of the energies unleashed by human beings in the village. And as massive danger looms, Hawkweed the Dreamcatcher and his apprentice Orlando find themselves forced to restore the equilibrium that Anna's has destroyed.Although King's human characters are drawn with sympathy and intelligence, it's the cannily realised feline protagonists who really compel the reader's attention. The resourceful Hawkweed has all the richness and roundedness one could wish for, while Orlando, always a little out of his depth, is the perfect foil. --Barry ForshawRead More