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3.66 AVERAGE
3.66 AVERAGE
Enchanting, succinct, and certainly the most delightful cautionary tale that I have ever read.
(Reread.) Dunsany's writing is amazing. Lyrical and evocative. It takes me a while to get into it each time I read one of his longer works — time to adjust the rhythm of my reading to match the prose. But it's worth it. Scenes like the forging of Alveric's sword and the arrival of the visitors in Erl sing with beauty.
adventurous
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
Meh
Might have inspired almost every big fantasy author of the last 100 years (including Tolkien) but the writing style doesn’t speak to me most of the time with all its meandering.
On top of that it doesn't go anywhere and then it just ends with a vague happy ending.
The Broken Sword is much more my cup of tea.
Might have inspired almost every big fantasy author of the last 100 years (including Tolkien) but the writing style doesn’t speak to me most of the time with all its meandering.
On top of that it doesn't go anywhere and then it just ends with a vague happy ending.
The Broken Sword is much more my cup of tea.
This is a work of which I'd heard repeatedly over the years since I first became interested in fantasy back in the 1960s, but which it never occurred to me to track down and read. I am certainly glad that I finally did so. I liked the way it presented magic. Elfland is separate from this world, and is pervaded by magic, in everything. Colors there are more vibrant, the landscape more lovely, and some tiny fragment of this manages to seep across the magical border that Elfland shares with the mundane world, and is the source of all wonder in our world.
While there is a plot that includes a heroic quest, a beautiful princess, and many other trappings of fairy tales, it is presented at perhaps somewhat greater length than some readers might prefer. The story, taken purely as a narrative, could probably be told in the space of a novella or even a short story. But the place where The King of Elfland's Daughter shines is in the quality of its prose. It has a poetic, lyrical style that evokes earlier centuries. Certain phrases, repeated frequently, almost give the impression of those phrases that recur in Homer's The Odyssey for the sake of poetic meter: where Homer gives us "The Rosy-Fingered Dawn" and "The wine-dark sea", Dunsany, referring to the King of Elfland's palace, gives us "The palace that can be told of only in song." For me, it is the lyrical quality of Dunsany's prose that is most captivating, and really makes this book shine.
While there is a plot that includes a heroic quest, a beautiful princess, and many other trappings of fairy tales, it is presented at perhaps somewhat greater length than some readers might prefer. The story, taken purely as a narrative, could probably be told in the space of a novella or even a short story. But the place where The King of Elfland's Daughter shines is in the quality of its prose. It has a poetic, lyrical style that evokes earlier centuries. Certain phrases, repeated frequently, almost give the impression of those phrases that recur in Homer's The Odyssey for the sake of poetic meter: where Homer gives us "The Rosy-Fingered Dawn" and "The wine-dark sea", Dunsany, referring to the King of Elfland's palace, gives us "The palace that can be told of only in song." For me, it is the lyrical quality of Dunsany's prose that is most captivating, and really makes this book shine.
Do you, like me, have that list of books (and movies) that you appreciate for their artistry but don't actually enjoy? The film Scarface is on that list for me, and so is this book. It apparently set the standard for much of the fantasy fiction that followed in its wake, and it does do a wonderful job of making elves into something truly eerie. (You can imagine the influence, for instance, on a book I enjoyed much more: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.) But I kept finding myself getting distracted from it by things like dust motes floating through the air and a sudden urge for a glass of water.
The rating, for me, is somewhere between a four and a five. Five because of the poetic feat that this book represents. The prose in this book is amazing. Pretty and rapturous as anything I ever read from Dunsany, but without the weaknesses of The Book of Wonder, where the narration was so busy with being pretty that it lost all sense of movement or tempo.
However, I think it's undeniable that the plot of the book is stretched very thin, and it is occasionally bogged down by episodes that take up more space than they contribute to the story (i confess my mind was wandering during the unicorn hunting scenes.)
All in all, delightful book to read, and I suspect even more delightful to thumb through from time to time, as a little treat after reading a serious, tersely written novel.
However, I think it's undeniable that the plot of the book is stretched very thin, and it is occasionally bogged down by episodes that take up more space than they contribute to the story (i confess my mind was wandering during the unicorn hunting scenes.)
All in all, delightful book to read, and I suspect even more delightful to thumb through from time to time, as a little treat after reading a serious, tersely written novel.
Eldritch fantasy. Influential fairy tale. Deeply romantic style.
A classic of Appendix N fantasy literature
A classic of fantasy literature rom the pen of Lord Dunsany, who was on Gary Gygax's famous "Appendix N" of authors and works that helped inspire D&D. A somewhat brilliant piece in which magic is truly magical, and Elfland is not at all like the fields we know . . .
A classic of fantasy literature rom the pen of Lord Dunsany, who was on Gary Gygax's famous "Appendix N" of authors and works that helped inspire D&D. A somewhat brilliant piece in which magic is truly magical, and Elfland is not at all like the fields we know . . .
3.5 ⭐
"The day with its cares and perplexities is ended and the night is now upon us. The night should be a time of peace and tranquillity, a time to relax and be calm. We have need of a soothing story to banish the disturbing thoughts of the day, to set at rest our troubled minds, and put at ease our ruffled spirits
And what sort of story shall we hear? Ah, it will be a familiar story, a story that is so very, very old, and yet it is so new. It is the old, old story of love[... love and magic]"
- P.Glass/R.Wilson (Knee 5)
Lord Dunsany actually sums up his own work quite succinctly when, speaking of the nature of time in Elfland, he says:
”Nothing seeks its happiness in movement or change or a new thing, but has its ecstasy in the perpetual contemplation of all the beauty that has ever been.”
A fairy tale imbued with future Fantasy staples,
Disarmingly charming prose, too infrequently bound to the profound,
Perpetual contemplation; of time and beauty,
A false and conditional love born of perceived necessity,
Magic, the art of the heathen; feared—desired—celebrated—feared.
That should do it.
“Let us keep to-day,” said that weighty troll, “while we have it, and not be lured where to-day is too easily lost. For every time men lose it their hair grows whiter, their limbs grow weaker and their faces sadder, and they are nearer still to to-morrow.”
"The day with its cares and perplexities is ended and the night is now upon us. The night should be a time of peace and tranquillity, a time to relax and be calm. We have need of a soothing story to banish the disturbing thoughts of the day, to set at rest our troubled minds, and put at ease our ruffled spirits
And what sort of story shall we hear? Ah, it will be a familiar story, a story that is so very, very old, and yet it is so new. It is the old, old story of love[... love and magic]"
- P.Glass/R.Wilson (Knee 5)
Lord Dunsany actually sums up his own work quite succinctly when, speaking of the nature of time in Elfland, he says:
”Nothing seeks its happiness in movement or change or a new thing, but has its ecstasy in the perpetual contemplation of all the beauty that has ever been.”
A fairy tale imbued with future Fantasy staples,
Disarmingly charming prose, too infrequently bound to the profound,
Perpetual contemplation; of time and beauty,
A false and conditional love born of perceived necessity,
Magic, the art of the heathen; feared—desired—celebrated—feared.
That should do it.
“Let us keep to-day,” said that weighty troll, “while we have it, and not be lured where to-day is too easily lost. For every time men lose it their hair grows whiter, their limbs grow weaker and their faces sadder, and they are nearer still to to-morrow.”
Reading this was like reading theological German. Except less interesting.