The story concerns the adventures of a group of children as they struggle to hold back a terrible darkness by fulfilling a prophecy from another world.

[3][4] Like many of Garner's books, the emphasis of the narrative is on the hardships, cost and practicalities of the choices and responsibilities that the protagonists face.

Inside, Helen, David and Nicholas are entranced by a tree, whose spell Roland breaks by severing it with a spear Malebron gave him.

The children emerge back in the church where no time has passed and the Treasures have become mundane objects, but they are later found to interfere with electronics and give off static electricity.

Over the next year, Nicholas rationalises their experience as a "mass hallucination", but Roland, having imagined their front door to enter Vandwy, believes that strange rattling sounds mean it is still connected to Elidor.

Elidor was a priest who as a boy was led by dwarves to a castle of gold in a land that, while beautiful, was not illuminated by the full light of the sun.

[5] This compares with Garner's description of the golden walls of Gorias contrasting with the dull sky of the land of Elidor.

Elidor begins with an epigraph quoting from William Shakespeare's King Lear: "Childe Rowland to the Dark Tower came" (Act III, sc.

[7] Late in the book a dying unicorn sings a 'swan song' and by this act brings a restitution of light to Elidor.

[8] Elidor was a commended runner-up for the annual Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book by a British subject.

The series consisted of six half-hour episodes broadcast weekly from 4 January to 8 February 1995, starring Damian Zuk as Roland and Suzanne Shaw as Helen.

[1] German and Japanese-language translations were published in 1969 followed by Catalan, Swedish, Danish, Finnish, and Dutch in the next two decades; Persian and Chinese in 2005.