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language: Welsh
country: UK
year: 2008
form: novel
genre(s): fantasy
dates read: 4.7.23-4.8.23
Ifan Morgan Jones’s Igam Ogam is a fascinating counterpart to Gormshuil an Rìgh, following a young man, Tomos Ap (he was adopted and doesn’t know his father’s name), and two of his friends as they return to Tomos’s adoptive father’s farm and find themselves abruptly caught up in an Otherworldly conflict between the druids of the Mabinogwlad (the Mabinogi-Country), the nature deity Cyrn-y-nos, and a resurrected King Arthur — now in possession of the body of the Archdruid of Gorsedd Cymru.
it’s both a wild ride and oddly sedate; there are long sections where very little happens, but once it gets going it (mostly) really moves. it’s a striking counterpoint to a number of standard “Celtic fantasy” tropes: the druids are devoted to Order, diametrically opposed to Cyrn-y-nos, and attempting to remove all magic from the Mabinogwlad; Cyrn-y-nos is, at least initially, a threatening power that wants to destroy world; and Arthur is evil (<3), driven by a desire for world domination and a xenophobic nationalism.
like Gormshuil an Rìgh, the Mabinogwlad is built on stories, a repeating series of legends in which the characters find themselves caught up — but also legends which are subject to change or restructuring, and which may come into conflict where they intersect (Arthur’s return vs. slaying the dragon vs. …). not much to say other than that I love this concept.
aside from the pacing, which is a bit erratic, there were a few other things that gave me pause, first a certain ambivalence about nature; while Cyrn-y-nos ultimately becomes a less malevolent figure, the novel doesn’t quite abandon one character’s claim “na allai dyn a natur barhau i gyd-fyw” (that man and nature could not manage to coexist). the gender politics of the handling of Angharad were also a bit…dubious, especially the immediate pivot to being a ~gold-digger~. I also would have liked to see more of Tomos-as-wizard; it felt like that aspect of the plot just got kind of dropped or abandoned halfway through.
all of this is to say, in a way, that it’s also a lot like An Sgoil Dhubh (but, I think, a bit more theoretically sophisticated): an interesting but flawed beginning. I’m looking forward to reading some of Jones’s other books in the future, especially Dadeni, which seems like it’ll be grappling with some similar questions but possibly with politics more foregrounded.
moods: adventurous, inspiring, lighthearted