 Literary critic Neil Philip would later relate that "this sense of a numinous, sacred potency in landscape" was something that imbued all of Garner's work.In a 1968 article Garner explained why he chose to set "The Weirdstone of Brisingamen" in a real landscape rather than in a fictional realm, remarking that "If we are in Eldorado, and we find a mandrake, then OK, so it's a mandrake