Peadar Ó Guilín
Author of The Call
About the Author
Series
Works by Peadar Ó Guilín
The 2011 Octocon Anthology — Contributor — 3 copies
The Mourning Trees 1 copy
The Evil Eater 1 copy
The Coming of the Crow 1 copy
Hair 1 copy
Associated Works
Black Gate: Adventures in Fantasy Literature, Issue 11 (Summer 2007) (2007) — Contributor — 13 copies, 1 review
The 2012 Octocon Anthology — Contributor — 3 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Ó Guilín, Peadar
- Birthdate
- 1968-06-12
- Gender
- male
- Agent
- Patrick Walsh (Conville and Walsh Ltd.)
Molly Ker Hawn (The Bent Agency) - Short biography
- In September 2007, Peadar Ó Guilín published his first novel, The Inferior, which the Times Educational Supplement called "a stark, dark tale, written with great energy and confidence and some arresting reflections on human nature." Foreign editors liked it too, and over the coming year it is to be translated into seven languages, including Japanese and Korean.
His fantasy and SF short stories have appeared in numerous venues, including Black Gate magazine and an anthology celebrating the best of the iconic Weird Tales. He is currently working on a sequel to his first novel and a comic about a secretive elephant.
Peadar lives in Dublin, where he toils day and night for a giant computer corporation. - Nationality
- Ireland
- Birthplace
- northwest Ireland
- Places of residence
- Dublin, Ireland
- Associated Place (for map)
- Dublin, Ireland
Members
Discussions
YA teens are teleported to deadly elf world for ten seconds in Earth, but in Elf land they must survive for 24 hours. in Name that Book (September 2020)
Dystopian World, Sci-Fi, Children Fighting for Survival in Name that Book (April 2019)
Reviews
Ireland has been cut off from the rest of the world by the Sidhe, who themselves are trapped in a hellish Fairyland. All teenagers are taken and hunted. Some survive, most do not. This is the world of The Call.
An absolutely blistering book, from the horror of the set-up to the pragmatic response to the plight of the teenagers training for the Call, to the battle for survival when each one is Called, to the happy demented sadism of the Sidhe to the bloody and nerve-shredding climax. The pace show more never lets up, the book hunts you down through its pages just like the Sidhe hunt their unfortunate prey, pursuing you through twist and turn and reversal, praying for someone to survive. It's a read.
Our protagonist is Nessa, least likely to survive because of her disability, and the most driven, utterly determined to come out alive. But with tensions rising in the Survival College and the possibility of enemies within, she might not be alive long enough to be Called. She's a feisty, passionate and ferocious, and she surely doesn't stand a chance.
The Call is hands-nailed-to-the-ages good. Violent, grim and nightmarish, it moves like a freight train and never lets up, an utterly unremitting fantasy horror thriller. show less
An absolutely blistering book, from the horror of the set-up to the pragmatic response to the plight of the teenagers training for the Call, to the battle for survival when each one is Called, to the happy demented sadism of the Sidhe to the bloody and nerve-shredding climax. The pace show more never lets up, the book hunts you down through its pages just like the Sidhe hunt their unfortunate prey, pursuing you through twist and turn and reversal, praying for someone to survive. It's a read.
Our protagonist is Nessa, least likely to survive because of her disability, and the most driven, utterly determined to come out alive. But with tensions rising in the Survival College and the possibility of enemies within, she might not be alive long enough to be Called. She's a feisty, passionate and ferocious, and she surely doesn't stand a chance.
The Call is hands-nailed-to-the-ages good. Violent, grim and nightmarish, it moves like a freight train and never lets up, an utterly unremitting fantasy horror thriller. show less
Set in a boarding school for young children who are preparing for the day they will be called to Faerie, almost everyone dies who is called and no-one is quite sure why they survive. These are the faerie of myth, not the twee bewinged creatures, but the angry creatures who were exiled to the underworld by human ancestors. These are the creatures our ancestors feared and who they warned about, not the sanitised Disney versions.
Nessa had polio and her legs are going to make it hard to run, in show more fact a lot of parents with children crippled like this kill them to spare them the inevitable death, but Nessa is determined to survive. Her survival will change things and dammit I want the next book now. show less
Nessa had polio and her legs are going to make it hard to run, in show more fact a lot of parents with children crippled like this kill them to spare them the inevitable death, but Nessa is determined to survive. Her survival will change things and dammit I want the next book now. show less
This being a full disclosure type of livejournal that puts great store in the faith our readers place in our integrity and objectivity, it behooves us to point out that the author of today's object of reviewage is none other than whatsisname on that other livejournal with whom I have exchanged much witty banter and good natured badinage. We here at uglychicken livejournal inc wish to reassure whatever readers we might have that this will in no way affect our assessment of said object, and show more that had we found said object to be a vile excresence, less comely than the most pus-ridden pustule poised atop Lucifer's own knobbly nose, we would not hesitate to pretend that the whole thing never happened and never bring it up again in any converstion whatsoever, polite or otherwise.
Fortunately, it's not quite that bad.
What it is, is readable. Now listen, I grew up in Ireland. In the seventies. The eighties. The Irish literary scene of that vintage did not do science fiction, fantasy or even crime for that matter. It just didn't. There was high-falutin' literary miserabilism, or romance. That was it. We were too poor for anything else. Any attempts to make brave forays into other genres were, by and large, anything but readable. This is why I do not read Irish science fiction, fantasy or crime. That will probably have to change.
So: readable. Very readable. You know that smooth way of writing that just slips through and goes down easy and carries you along? That kind of readable. Halfway through the damn book before you even realise it kind of readable. It's not just style, of course, it's plot and character and pace and all the things that go into making a book clicking together and running like a smooth machine. The fiction equivalent of class. You either got it, or you don't.
The Inferior is a bloody tale of a human tribe stranded in a world full of alien tribes competing to see who can eat the most of all the other alien tribes because they are yummy, and because there isn't that much else to eat.
To hero Stopmouth and his family, of course, this is the normal natural way of things. You go out, you kill something, bring it home and eat it. Occasionally something kills and eats you, and when you're too old to go out killing things, you're sent off as meat on the hoof to a tribe with whom there is a more or less peaceful arrangement. It's not natural, of course, as the white eggs buzzing around near the roof will indicate to the savvy reader. It's some sort of horrifying prison/entertainment arrangement, and it soon becomes apparent that for all the ugliness of their situation Stopmouth's people retain far more of their humanity, in their loyalty to family and tribe, than those who watch them. When the eggs go to war and a mysterious woman arrives amongst them, their fragile existence is threatened, and the truth begins to emerge.
There's an old-fashioned sense of bravura to the whole adventure that reminds me of Philip Jose Farmer. Riverworld, Dark of the Sun and World of Tiers all featured humanity thrown into conflict against hosts of strange creatures across vast alien, and sometimes artificial, landscapes. So with The Inferior as our hero contends with one bloody alien horror after another. It'd make for grim reading if the characters weren't so engaging that the reader empathises with their situation rather than recoils with disgust at their actions. As it is it's a rollicking, breathless adventure full of unexpected twists and an amazing menagerie of alien monsters, though, of course, they're generally no more or less monstrous than human. With one or two exceptions.
It reaches a satisfying conclusion, but obviously there's more to come. If only there was some way to communicate with the reclusive author to find out whether or when there might be a sequel due...
We here at uglychicken livejournal inc were going to post the whole 'train ticket story' as part of the review, but we have wasted enough time at work already, so maybe in comments.
The train ticket story:
Well, let's see. In those days we had these things that we called trains and we used them to get round. They were like, I dunno, really long snails that crawled along these things like the bits you get on a fork? Only there were two of them instead of four and they were tied together with these big matchsticks. The matchsticks kept catching fire and exploding and the snails would get scared, thinking flaming Frenchmen were coming to eat them, and they'd fall over and retract into their shell and everybody'd get squashed until France dropped below the horizon and the snail would get moving again.
To travel on the snails you had to have a ticket. Tickets could be tricky enough to come by because when the conducter came round to sell them he'd just wave his baton at you and the orchestra would run in and start playing, and if you were lucky it was just a short piece like a madrigal or a detumescent and we'd all clap delightedly and say oh, how baroque, but sometimes they'd play an entire symphony, and if the snail fell over and retracted all their intruments would get mixed up and you'd have the percussonist playing the bassoon and the oboe playing the cellist and then they'd have to start all over again and sometimes Robert Wagner would come along and they'd do the entire Ring Cycle, which takes three years and a cast of five thousand, half of them castrati, about a millionare husband and wife detective team and their loyal dwarf who must solve murders, rescue cursed gold and contend with a pantheon of neurotic Norse gods. Frankly, by the time they got to the passengers, we were lucky if they had any tickets left at all.
So we used to make our own. Couldn't go on a trip by snail without your own design and print booth. Everyone was expected to chip in. Some brought trees for the paper, others brought squid for the ink and others brought distraught, lovelorn artists, shot them up with heroin and lsd, and forced them to run up a series of attracive but functional designs. Later, the valkyries would ride them for the big finale of Gotterdammerung.
So we ended up with tickets of our own for travelling on the snail. Sooner or later, usually during the third act of Siegfried which just gives everyone a headache, the conducter came round and punched the tickets. We would weep quietly to ourselves as he battered our poor tickets into oblivion, jumping up and down on them, calling them mean names. At last I had enough, so I hit him over the head with a copy of The Inferior and he fell down, and all the passengers jumped up and started hitting him with their copies of The Inferior and then the orchestra came running up and started hitting him with their copies of the libretto, which turned out to be the German translation of The Inferior, then a hundred hungry flaming Frencmen descended from the sky and ate the snail and I alone am returned alive to tell thee. show less
Fortunately, it's not quite that bad.
What it is, is readable. Now listen, I grew up in Ireland. In the seventies. The eighties. The Irish literary scene of that vintage did not do science fiction, fantasy or even crime for that matter. It just didn't. There was high-falutin' literary miserabilism, or romance. That was it. We were too poor for anything else. Any attempts to make brave forays into other genres were, by and large, anything but readable. This is why I do not read Irish science fiction, fantasy or crime. That will probably have to change.
So: readable. Very readable. You know that smooth way of writing that just slips through and goes down easy and carries you along? That kind of readable. Halfway through the damn book before you even realise it kind of readable. It's not just style, of course, it's plot and character and pace and all the things that go into making a book clicking together and running like a smooth machine. The fiction equivalent of class. You either got it, or you don't.
The Inferior is a bloody tale of a human tribe stranded in a world full of alien tribes competing to see who can eat the most of all the other alien tribes because they are yummy, and because there isn't that much else to eat.
To hero Stopmouth and his family, of course, this is the normal natural way of things. You go out, you kill something, bring it home and eat it. Occasionally something kills and eats you, and when you're too old to go out killing things, you're sent off as meat on the hoof to a tribe with whom there is a more or less peaceful arrangement. It's not natural, of course, as the white eggs buzzing around near the roof will indicate to the savvy reader. It's some sort of horrifying prison/entertainment arrangement, and it soon becomes apparent that for all the ugliness of their situation Stopmouth's people retain far more of their humanity, in their loyalty to family and tribe, than those who watch them. When the eggs go to war and a mysterious woman arrives amongst them, their fragile existence is threatened, and the truth begins to emerge.
There's an old-fashioned sense of bravura to the whole adventure that reminds me of Philip Jose Farmer. Riverworld, Dark of the Sun and World of Tiers all featured humanity thrown into conflict against hosts of strange creatures across vast alien, and sometimes artificial, landscapes. So with The Inferior as our hero contends with one bloody alien horror after another. It'd make for grim reading if the characters weren't so engaging that the reader empathises with their situation rather than recoils with disgust at their actions. As it is it's a rollicking, breathless adventure full of unexpected twists and an amazing menagerie of alien monsters, though, of course, they're generally no more or less monstrous than human. With one or two exceptions.
It reaches a satisfying conclusion, but obviously there's more to come. If only there was some way to communicate with the reclusive author to find out whether or when there might be a sequel due...
We here at uglychicken livejournal inc were going to post the whole 'train ticket story' as part of the review, but we have wasted enough time at work already, so maybe in comments.
The train ticket story:
Well, let's see. In those days we had these things that we called trains and we used them to get round. They were like, I dunno, really long snails that crawled along these things like the bits you get on a fork? Only there were two of them instead of four and they were tied together with these big matchsticks. The matchsticks kept catching fire and exploding and the snails would get scared, thinking flaming Frenchmen were coming to eat them, and they'd fall over and retract into their shell and everybody'd get squashed until France dropped below the horizon and the snail would get moving again.
To travel on the snails you had to have a ticket. Tickets could be tricky enough to come by because when the conducter came round to sell them he'd just wave his baton at you and the orchestra would run in and start playing, and if you were lucky it was just a short piece like a madrigal or a detumescent and we'd all clap delightedly and say oh, how baroque, but sometimes they'd play an entire symphony, and if the snail fell over and retracted all their intruments would get mixed up and you'd have the percussonist playing the bassoon and the oboe playing the cellist and then they'd have to start all over again and sometimes Robert Wagner would come along and they'd do the entire Ring Cycle, which takes three years and a cast of five thousand, half of them castrati, about a millionare husband and wife detective team and their loyal dwarf who must solve murders, rescue cursed gold and contend with a pantheon of neurotic Norse gods. Frankly, by the time they got to the passengers, we were lucky if they had any tickets left at all.
So we used to make our own. Couldn't go on a trip by snail without your own design and print booth. Everyone was expected to chip in. Some brought trees for the paper, others brought squid for the ink and others brought distraught, lovelorn artists, shot them up with heroin and lsd, and forced them to run up a series of attracive but functional designs. Later, the valkyries would ride them for the big finale of Gotterdammerung.
So we ended up with tickets of our own for travelling on the snail. Sooner or later, usually during the third act of Siegfried which just gives everyone a headache, the conducter came round and punched the tickets. We would weep quietly to ourselves as he battered our poor tickets into oblivion, jumping up and down on them, calling them mean names. At last I had enough, so I hit him over the head with a copy of The Inferior and he fell down, and all the passengers jumped up and started hitting him with their copies of The Inferior and then the orchestra came running up and started hitting him with their copies of the libretto, which turned out to be the German translation of The Inferior, then a hundred hungry flaming Frencmen descended from the sky and ate the snail and I alone am returned alive to tell thee. show less
After the events of The Deserter we're back on the ground and things are only getting worse. Stopmouth's old tribe are trapped, the aliens around them dwindling as the Diggers close in, while above the lights of the Roof flicker and die. Chief Wallbreaker is a coward, but a survivor, and he knows his days are numbered. The arrival of a fugitive from the roof with intelligence about the world around them and the nature of the Diggers compels him to send the tribe on a desperate and suicidal show more migration to where rocky hills may keep the Diggers at bay, hills occupied by another humantribe led by Wallbreaker's traitorous brother Stopmouth.
Another nasty, violent, bloody adventure of survival in a world artificially contrived to bring out the savagery in any thinking being - purely for the purposes of punishment for a generation's-gone crime and entertainment for a decadent, disintegrating society - and yet one that within the savagery allows for the flourishing of a noble selflessness amidst ignorance and casual acts of brutality, a love of family and tribe where the ultimate sacrifice is taken for granted, and never wasted.
This is the climactic volume of the Bone World Trilogy, where everything falls apart and new thinking is needed, and though Stopmouth is a figure of heroic stature, it is his selfish brother who somehow finds the vision and ingenuity and ruthlessness that may save everyone. Bone World is a world of ironies and contradictions, and this trilogy is fantastically readable and exciting and suspenseful, with wonderful characters and real emotional heft, and should easily appeal to fans of the Chaos Walking Trilogy by Patrick Ness. show less
Another nasty, violent, bloody adventure of survival in a world artificially contrived to bring out the savagery in any thinking being - purely for the purposes of punishment for a generation's-gone crime and entertainment for a decadent, disintegrating society - and yet one that within the savagery allows for the flourishing of a noble selflessness amidst ignorance and casual acts of brutality, a love of family and tribe where the ultimate sacrifice is taken for granted, and never wasted.
This is the climactic volume of the Bone World Trilogy, where everything falls apart and new thinking is needed, and though Stopmouth is a figure of heroic stature, it is his selfish brother who somehow finds the vision and ingenuity and ruthlessness that may save everyone. Bone World is a world of ironies and contradictions, and this trilogy is fantastically readable and exciting and suspenseful, with wonderful characters and real emotional heft, and should easily appeal to fans of the Chaos Walking Trilogy by Patrick Ness. show less
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Statistics
- Works
- 15
- Also by
- 9
- Members
- 1,102
- Popularity
- #23,318
- Rating
- 3.8
- Reviews
- 64
- ISBNs
- 54
- Languages
- 5