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giadalegge's review against another edition
adventurous
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
lizzybethrae's review against another edition
3.0
I picked up this book because my grandma was moving and she was getting rid of some things. This book in particular caught my eye because the edition is very beautiful, with several full page illustrations.
It's you are already familiar with Irish folklore, this may come easier than it did for me. I think this book could have been well served with many more annotations instead of the handful that were present.
2.5 stars rounded up for the pretty cover.
It's you are already familiar with Irish folklore, this may come easier than it did for me. I think this book could have been well served with many more annotations instead of the handful that were present.
2.5 stars rounded up for the pretty cover.
odysseusta's review against another edition
4.0
This was an enjoyable collection to read. Stephens' writing was much better than I was expecting -- for some reason I thought it would be a very flowery, wordy, forced-archaic style, but it turned out to be clean and lively. The tales are broken down weirdly, in that each "chapter" of a tale is short and hardly worth the page break. And in some of the tales the author wedges in some kind of "old gods vs new christianity" motif that contributes little to the overall story. But those are minor gripes.
I'm not that familiar with Irish tales or mythology, so I can't say how close the author sticks with the tradition, but it did inspire me to dig further into that area, as well as make me interested to read more of Stephens' work.
nigellicus's review
5.0
We've managed in the space of three volumes to run the available gamut of titles for books of tales of Irish fairies and come full circle, as it were. These aren't even the sort of fairy tales I was looking for, being mostly about Finn and the Fianna, but actually, there's a good deal of fairy stuff in here, so I think it was worthwhile from that point of view.
So it opens with the story of a man here since the first people came to Ireland after the flood and follows on down through mythical settlements and invasions, with the man transforming into a beast at each juncture and enjoying a long exuberant life as king of that species, until finally he becomes king of the salmon, gets caught by a fisherman of the King of Ulster, is eaten by the queen and born to her as a son. There's a lovely giddy logic to it.
Next comes the Boyhood of Fionn, a justly praised literary masterpiece, gorgeously lyrical, and I began to question why this wasn't part of a work with the stature of something like The Once And Future King. It's a work for grown-ups, maybe, more so at least than The Sword In The Stone, but it has flashes of rare wit here and there and is extremely readable. The Irish, however, have a complicated relationship with our mythical heroes. Like leprechauns they're to be pitied for the way in which they have become embarrassing cliches and caricatures, and of course the inevitable association of a glorious warriors past doesn't help, but neither does the humiliation of hundreds of years of defeat and foreign rule. There's that speech in Trainspotting about what is there to be proud of in being Scottish. Most Irish people internalised that lesson long ago.
Nonetheless, there is something here that surely transcends national ambivalence, something that surely should be part of the canon of fantasy literature. Except this is not a novel, despite containing the start to a great novel within it. Once Fionn becomes leader, his nature changes, the stories become episodic, Fionn is sidelined or barely present, and often powerless and even humiliated. The final story doesn't mention him at all, and one assumes it isn't a Fionn story until a line at the end which is the sort of cheat no 20th century audience would put up with for a moment.
No doubt someone has written a novel about Fionn - I remember Rosemary Sutcliffe's book fondly - but it's an awful pity James Stephens didn't because it would have been definitive and influential. Though it should be noted that there appear to be issues with women that are hard to parse. Most of the major female roles are negative, and it's hard to say whether it's because of the source material or the author, or even at times the author poking fun at the misogyny of the source material, though by the end he seems to embrace it fully. On the other hand, the relationship between Fionn and Goll mor mac Morna is an amazing one, uniquely Irish I would have thought.
A rich book, product of the great Anglo Irish Celtic Revival, it's just a pity he decided to let the fragmentary nature of the ancient oral tradition dictate the form, leaving us with yet another book of tales, rather than a brilliant novel.
So it opens with the story of a man here since the first people came to Ireland after the flood and follows on down through mythical settlements and invasions, with the man transforming into a beast at each juncture and enjoying a long exuberant life as king of that species, until finally he becomes king of the salmon, gets caught by a fisherman of the King of Ulster, is eaten by the queen and born to her as a son. There's a lovely giddy logic to it.
Next comes the Boyhood of Fionn, a justly praised literary masterpiece, gorgeously lyrical, and I began to question why this wasn't part of a work with the stature of something like The Once And Future King. It's a work for grown-ups, maybe, more so at least than The Sword In The Stone, but it has flashes of rare wit here and there and is extremely readable. The Irish, however, have a complicated relationship with our mythical heroes. Like leprechauns they're to be pitied for the way in which they have become embarrassing cliches and caricatures, and of course the inevitable association of a glorious warriors past doesn't help, but neither does the humiliation of hundreds of years of defeat and foreign rule. There's that speech in Trainspotting about what is there to be proud of in being Scottish. Most Irish people internalised that lesson long ago.
Nonetheless, there is something here that surely transcends national ambivalence, something that surely should be part of the canon of fantasy literature. Except this is not a novel, despite containing the start to a great novel within it. Once Fionn becomes leader, his nature changes, the stories become episodic, Fionn is sidelined or barely present, and often powerless and even humiliated. The final story doesn't mention him at all, and one assumes it isn't a Fionn story until a line at the end which is the sort of cheat no 20th century audience would put up with for a moment.
No doubt someone has written a novel about Fionn - I remember Rosemary Sutcliffe's book fondly - but it's an awful pity James Stephens didn't because it would have been definitive and influential. Though it should be noted that there appear to be issues with women that are hard to parse. Most of the major female roles are negative, and it's hard to say whether it's because of the source material or the author, or even at times the author poking fun at the misogyny of the source material, though by the end he seems to embrace it fully. On the other hand, the relationship between Fionn and Goll mor mac Morna is an amazing one, uniquely Irish I would have thought.
A rich book, product of the great Anglo Irish Celtic Revival, it's just a pity he decided to let the fragmentary nature of the ancient oral tradition dictate the form, leaving us with yet another book of tales, rather than a brilliant novel.
bzedan's review
3.0
There's really not a lot to dislike about Irish fairy tales. The ones in this book run more the lines of kings and warriors and their interactions with the magic world.
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