Review: The Garden Gnome by Jeff McIntyre

Blurb:

Where did magic go?

Our world is defined by science, but history tells us that the world was once a much more magical place. Every culture has tales of when the gods walked among us, when strange magical creatures dwelt in the dark, and when users of magic were respected and feared.

We tell ourselves that these stories are myth and superstition. But what if they aren’t?

What if magic were to return? And what does it have to do with a ten-year-old boy and his imaginary friend?

Daniel and Sophia Fitzroy are worried that their son Tony is being bullied in his new school and is struggling to cope.

Leo Schafer is reporting on a new and powerful particle accelerator experiment and the protestors who want it stopped.

FBI Special Agent Debra Kazdin is investigating the protests and trying to keep things from escalating.

Brian Cooke is being inducted into a secret society that knows the truth about magic and will stop at nothing to keep it from returning.

They will be drawn together in an extraordinary confrontation that will change the world forever.

Review:

That was an interesting, kind of fun to read novel. If I left it at that, I’d be doing myself and others a disservice when talking about “The Garden Gnome”. Plus, that sentence applies to most books I read. It all started one afternoon when McIntyre asked me if I’d be interested in reading his book, I agreed, and a few days later, I’m flipping through pages, consuming “The Garden Gnome” in haste, each page keeping me interested. 

If I had to interest you with this novel, I’d give you two sentences:

“A young kid is the reincarnation of Merlin, cultists want to kill him, whilst his family is caught in the crossfires. Also there’s a dragon.”

Alongside a phrase asking if you’d like to read more. But, like I keep saying, it doesn’t do the full book justice, nor does it highlight it’s highs and lows. What can be done better and what was done well.

First off, we have the characters. The Fitzroys, Leo Schafer, Debra Kazdin and Brian Cooke. Plus others. Oh, and Bob.

Lets begin with the Fitzroys, Daniel, Sophia and their kid, Tony. Typical one child family, Sophia has a good job with a company that works in investments, Daniel plays with Tony a lot, and Tony… Tony has an imaginary friend called Bob. Who is Bob? His parents don’t know, he’s just pretend and they’re more worried about him not having actual friends.But that’s just rewriting the blurb. Bob is the gnome of the book, more on him later. Besides that, throughout the book, the parents learn that there’s more to the world than meets the eye, and that magic is real, in a limited way, and that their ordeal was only just the beginning.

After the Fitzroys there’s Leo Schafer, a journalist looking into a shady group protesting against a research facilty, which leads to him meeting up with Debra Kazdin, a FBI agent, to get more info on that company. Meanwhile, he and Daniel Fitzroy are talking to each other over Tony's friendlessness. He is successful at gathering information over the shady group, but ends up in a vipers nest of magic and backstabbing thanks to his connection with the Fitzroys. By the end of the novel, he too gets to reorder everything he knows

Moving from Schafer to Debra Kazdin, we have a young, ambitious, OCD afflicted FBI agent.trying to prove herself to the rest of the department. And so, when her boss calls her in for a job to look into a group protesting against a research facility - coincidently the same group as Schafer, she accepts the assignment and goes in to investigate. Throughout the novel she struggles with her OCD, makes new friends, and gets introduced to a hidden world, and by the end of it, she’s in the same boat as everyone else already mentioned in this review. Except for Bob and Dragon.

Lastly, before I end up talking extensively about Bob and the Dragon, and their implications in the novel, there’s one more character I’d like to say a thing or two about: Brian Cooke.

Cooke is, was, military until a secret organisation faked his death and tasked him with carrying a cursed, or blessed, really depends on which way you look at it, blade around. His task? Make sure that magic doesn’t return. Is he successful on his mission? Read and find out. He has some moral quandaries he thinks through, and deals with them accordingly. And by the end of the book, he, like the rest, has only just begun the journey into chaos.

Now to the second aspect of the book that was done well. The magic. Mentioning magic here, I find it morally obligatory to bring up Bob and the Dragon here, not as part of the characters. Partially due to the fact that they’re the ancient ones in the group, but the primary reason is that they are magical creations that are able to sustain themselves indefinitely and are integral to the return of magic, trying to keep the source alive before that secret society kills it. Bob is a gnome, a creature of earth and magic, and he’s taken a liking to Tony, protecting him from danger. The dragon was the first creation of the first iteration of the source, and is fiercely protective of it. Besides that, magic is basically the idea of what we would expect it to be. Nothing fancy, but if it works, which in this case it does, there’s no need to gripe about it. Only thing that’s added to the magic of this world is the consequence of the source turning over into adulthood. What’s the consequence? Just a horrible catastrophe that could wipe out a lot of people. Which is why that secret group exists… to kill the source before it comes of age.

Lastly there is the world, history and lore McIntyre has crafted. Or more accurately, added to ours. He keeps our world history mostly intact, only sprinkling in the source every once and a while, alongside tidbits of how old the feud is, but besides that, it’s just earth. With us humans on it, with a few meandering magical creations. Again, like the magic, it works because it’s simple and easy to grasp what’s going on and we don’t need to fully understand the history of the world because we already do. All we have to do is use a bit of imagination and the fiction presented to us is feasible.

If I had to gripe about a thing or two in this novel, I’d say that there is a lot of coincidences going on. Too many. Leo Schafer knows the family, the family knows one of the central figures, and they all are in the same town - without much travel needed. It's a microcosm of a story without much going outside of it, and it irked me a bit. Especially because the chances are basically the whole trope of “I know a guy who knows another guy who knows this guy”

All in all, if you like mythology, want to have a nice, relaxed adventure with minimal death and destruction, and with a somewhat happy ending, this novel is for you. 

As always, if you’ve gotten this far into the review, thank you for reading it and I hope I’ve been able to nudge you towards your next read. If this book isn’t what you are looking for, there’s reviews for books in almost every genre, with more coming out each day. There’s a review for a new grimdark, “Die Young” by Morgan Shank, that Joe Lee has written over here, or a review for a fantasy epic, “Stone and Sky” by Z.S. Diamanti, that Abel Montero has written, over here.

Wherever you are reading this review, have a good morning, good afternoon, good evening and good night!