The Hounds of the Morrigan

Very creative and vivid world. Can’t put it down even though I have read it several times lol. Great for all ages. Read alone or as a family. Highly recommend

This is a masterpiece.Look, I can rave about as many books as I read (and I will) but in the end, this book is my very favourite. It took ten years to write and is, quite frankly, brilliant.It has (almost) everything that recommends a book to me. Warm, endearing protagonists (Pidge and Brigit are two of the most delightful heroes to grace children's literature), truly threatening bad guys, humour, suspense, scary bits, happy bits, bits that make your scalp tingle, and bits that make your heart sing. It's about friendship, and love, and courage, and good versus evil. It's about ordinary people doing extraordinary things. It's ostensibly a children's story, but is strengthened by some challenging concepts. Its length, which would normally be limiting, merely prolongs the absolute delight to be found in this book. The plot is engrossing, although slow moving to start off with and references to Irish mythology lend an air of familiarity to the story. The true strength of the book though, lies in its characters. Everyone in this book has a story. Every character is fully dimensional. You can picture Puddeneen having his life made cheerfully miserable by Miss Fancy just as strongly as you can picture Brigit growing into a vibrant, intelligent young woman and Puddeneen is a talking frog. That is how well O'Shea does her job.I could never understand why 'His Dark Materials' etc were any more popular than this truly marvellous book. I recommend it above all others. It's beautiful.

I found this book in my local library when I was eleven. It stayed with me for years, in the back of my brain. Finally, when I was eighteen, my friend surprised me with a hardcover version. It was even more incredible the second time around. I can't believe that this book has been such a whisper in the world of literature, let alone "young adult fantasy". O'Shea does with this masterpiece what most artists and writers could only dream of doing. Furthermore, she saves old Ireland with every heart she captures between the pages of this book. I only wish Columbus, Ohio had a writer to pull the stories up from under the asphalt the way O'Shea did with her modern town. Stories like this are what will save us.

Some books stretch the bounds of credulity with unexplained magical feats, but with this book I just didn't care; it makes no pretensions to be other than what it is - a children's fairy story, where anything can and does happen; monsters, giants, shapeshifters, witches, magic, talking animals - this book has the lot. It made me want to read it out loud to my grand-daughter, if it wasn't so long! It has that (now) outdated 'story-book' delivery to it that is somehow very appropriate to the plot and characters; short, descriptive sentences without waffle or padding convey the gist of the story using exactly the right words and phraseology - no wading through paragraphs of tortuous description. Brigit steals the show with her feisty 'I can do anything and I'm not afraid of YOU' attitude and the other characterisations are so good, you can 'see' each one in your mind's eye. Ideal material for a film, but I fear that Terry Gilliam is the only one good enough to do it justice. I loved it - read it with a child's open mind and you will too - a real joy!

I first read The Hounds Of The Morrigan in elementary school. Recently while at the library, it caught my eye again, almost like Pidge in the story. This is a wonderful novel - the characters are as alive as any people I've met, the setting is amazing, and, especially for a childrens book, the plots and subplots are intricate and complex. But fascinating - it's almost hypnotic - this is the only book I have ever seriously not been physically able to put down while reading it. Anybody looking for (I mean anybody, from 10 to much older) a really good fantasy and the quest you wished for devoutly as a child, a crash course in Irish mythology, and the kind of book will probably never come along again - read this book. It's well worth it. I wish Pat O'Shea would write another book like this - perhaps someday she will. Until then, read this one and hope. Come on, Pidge and Briget are waiting!

This book became one of my ten "comfort books"...the ones I look for in hardcover, so they don't break or rip every time I move. They're the ones that follow me everywhere I go. "Hounds" was enchanting the first time I read it, and was just as wonderful the 40th (really!) time. I credit this book with sparking my interest in things Celtic. I would love to read anything else by Pat O'Shea, but this seems to be her tour-de-force...she has a small children's book out. It, too, is lovely, but it's nothing like this! For the English Majors out there...even more so than the main characters, watch the bit parts. Every chapter is filled with people and animals who have their own purposes in the story, and each one is developed to the point that you just KNOW they have lives outside the bounds of their small, sometimes one-line parts...Highly recommended.