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3.66 AVERAGE
3.66 AVERAGE
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
challenging
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Loveable characters:
No
At some point I'll finish it, but it is very very very dense and so sloooooowwww! In comparison, The Lord of the Rings is easy peasy lemon cheesy and as fast as your good next-door romance.
This was a weird and lovely little book! It read almost like a poem. Lyrical, I suppose you could call it? It's light on plot. And unicorns are treated. . . unpleasantly. And it's hard to understand. But I finished the Outlander a month ago, so maybe I've been primed to let long descriptions wash over me. And I'm raising two elementary-school-aged kids so maybe I've been primed to find the good in long rambling dream-like stories.
But despite agreeing with a lot of the points raised in the two-star reviews, I liked it. I often will agree with two-star reviews and be like, "yeah, but that was the point," or "but it worked!" And it was. And it did!
But despite agreeing with a lot of the points raised in the two-star reviews, I liked it. I often will agree with two-star reviews and be like, "yeah, but that was the point," or "but it worked!" And it was. And it did!
adventurous
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
emotional
funny
lighthearted
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I'm always a sucker for classic fantasy and fairy tales, and on top of that, I know a few instructors who have included this novel in their Fantasy Lit courses. With it being so short, I figured I'd give it a read, and to me delight, I was utterly engrossed in the magical worlds of Erl and Elfland.
Things I Liked
1. Prose: Lord Dunsany’s style is whimsical and simple, taking on an almost childish tone while remaining lyrical and descriptive. It feels a bit like reading older prose and it’s vaguely reminiscent of medieval styles of poetry. As a result, the writing itself enhances the already magical quality of the narrative.
2. Magic: The point of this novel isn’t that magic is involved, but rather, magic is taken as an everyday occurrence. It’s not the focus of the plot (not really), but appears more often than not as a description of what’s going on. For example, there are many offhand comments such as the trolls being terrified of dogs because of course they are - that’s their nature. There is no attempt to explain the whys and hows, magic isn’t a metaphor, it’s just simply there and I think that’s perfect.
3. Elfland vs The Fields We Know: A lot of stories that contain both the mortal realm and a magical one have the tendency to make the mortal realm mundane and colorless when compared to the magical one. However, Dunsany makes the mortal realm just as beautiful and enchanting as Elfland: Lirazel and the trolls find beauty in the things humans take for granted, like the stars and the pigeons and the hats that people wear. It’s a wonderful change of pace from the tropes usually associated with a elfin world, and, in my opinion, it helps readers see the beauty of their own reality and the world we live in.
Things I Didn’t Like
1. Pace: You have to have some degree of patience to read this novel. There isn’t really a driving plot to keep the pace upbeat and suspenseful, so this novel reads more like a bunch of fairy tale descriptions strung together.
Recommendations: You might like this book if you're a fan of fairy tales and classic fantasy with characters such as elves, trolls, etc. You might also like this book if you liked The Hobbit or The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
Things I Liked
1. Prose: Lord Dunsany’s style is whimsical and simple, taking on an almost childish tone while remaining lyrical and descriptive. It feels a bit like reading older prose and it’s vaguely reminiscent of medieval styles of poetry. As a result, the writing itself enhances the already magical quality of the narrative.
2. Magic: The point of this novel isn’t that magic is involved, but rather, magic is taken as an everyday occurrence. It’s not the focus of the plot (not really), but appears more often than not as a description of what’s going on. For example, there are many offhand comments such as the trolls being terrified of dogs because of course they are - that’s their nature. There is no attempt to explain the whys and hows, magic isn’t a metaphor, it’s just simply there and I think that’s perfect.
3. Elfland vs The Fields We Know: A lot of stories that contain both the mortal realm and a magical one have the tendency to make the mortal realm mundane and colorless when compared to the magical one. However, Dunsany makes the mortal realm just as beautiful and enchanting as Elfland: Lirazel and the trolls find beauty in the things humans take for granted, like the stars and the pigeons and the hats that people wear. It’s a wonderful change of pace from the tropes usually associated with a elfin world, and, in my opinion, it helps readers see the beauty of their own reality and the world we live in.
Things I Didn’t Like
1. Pace: You have to have some degree of patience to read this novel. There isn’t really a driving plot to keep the pace upbeat and suspenseful, so this novel reads more like a bunch of fairy tale descriptions strung together.
Recommendations: You might like this book if you're a fan of fairy tales and classic fantasy with characters such as elves, trolls, etc. You might also like this book if you liked The Hobbit or The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
While Dunsany could’ve cut out a deal of the bits about Orion, his writing is completely magical. Rarely have I encountered a writer who both seeks to make the reader drunk off of descriptive, world-loving prose and is good at it. What a tale, and what telling.
4/5 stars
In a medieval-ish area of England called Erl, a parliament no longer wants a human king despite how well they have served them. They want to be ruled by a magic king. So Alveric, son of the king, is tasked with crossing over the twilight border into Elfland to meet and marry Lirazel, the titular King of Elfand's Daughter. Alveric takes her back to Erl and they are wedded and have a son named Orion, but the happiness is short-lived. Lirazel can't adjust to the world of humans and is summoned back to Elfland by her father. Alveric goes on a fruitless quest to find her; fruitless, because the King of Elfland has used his runes and magic to hide Elfland from him. And Orion is raised by the hunters Oth and Threl and the witch Ziroonderel, never truly knowing his parents, but constantly venturing to the gloaming border between "the fields we know" and Elfland. Soon, the denizens of Elfland spill over into Erl, and it seems the borders of both worlds are being effaced.
Lord Dunsany's writings, not just The King of Elfland's Daughter, were inspirational to many later writers of fantasy (and horror), most notably J. R. R. Tolkien. Gene Wolfe, Michael Moorcock, Ursula K. Le Guin, Robert E. Howard, H. P. Lovecraft, Arthur C. Clarke, Jorge Luis Borges, David Eddings, Peter S. Beagle, and Neil Gaiman--who provided an introduction for this edition--were also inspired, and if you've read any of their works, you can see how. I first came across Dunsany when reading Le Guin's essay "[b:From Elfland to Poughkeepsie|68036|From Elfland to Poughkeepsie|Ursula K. Le Guin|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png|65964]" where she exalts his fantasy prose for not only being beautiful but doing its job of keeping readers in a fantasy world. However, she also states that many new fantasy writers try to imitate his prose rather than producing their own, making Dunsay "the First Terrible Fate that Awaiteth Unwary Beginners in Fantasy."
Basically, Dunsany is a big deal in the world of fantasy, even if you've never heard of him or read him. I can definitely see how this book influenced Tolkien, Moorcock, Le Guin, and Lovecraft. Tolkien, because of a love between a human man and an elf woman--the story was published a year before Tolkien wrote, but did not yet publish, Beren and Lúthien's romance a.k.a the precursors to Aragorn and Arwen. At the same time there is a theme in The King of Elfland's Daughter about how inconsequential the passage of Time is for Elfland in contrast to the human world, which is also reminiscent of the humans versus elves mindset over immortality in Middle-earth. For Moorcock, I thought that Alveric's magical sword was influential on Elric of Melniboné's magical, soul-sucking sword, but I was apparently mistaken; that right goes to Poul Anderson's [b:The Broken Sword|40500762|The Broken Sword|Poul Anderson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1528569301l/40500762._SY75_.jpg|1205843]. I'm guessing the Pegana stories were more influential on Moorcock. For Le Guin, it's mostly his prose, more on that in a bit, but also his descriptions of nature. Le Guin did not always details nature in her works, but I can see the influence. As for Lovecraft, you can see the influence only a few times here, but the brief descriptions of a unicorn bleeding out and being beheaded certainly calls to mind some of Lovecraft's more fleshy horrors. Simultaneously, there are some brief mentions of some ancient, unknown power coursing throughout Elfland and the nature of the human world, though it isn't eldritch like Lovecraft.
Okay, now on to the review...
Off the bat, Dunsany's prose is absolutely, fucking gorgeous! Sure, it's flowery, but not too flowery. At least, for me. Though it can be a wordy and can make the paragraphs and chapter seem much longer than what they are. Sometimes, Dunsany repeats the exact, same multi-word adjectives and descriptions for certain things which it can add to the tediousness. Once you get the hang of it, you're good. And the pacing is still very fair. Still, it's all beautifully worded and constructed. Dunsany's prose belongs to an era of fantasy literature that we're not seeing as much anymore in this post-2020 world. Hell...We probably haven't seen it since maybe the 90s. The King of Elfland's Daughter belongs to the era of fantasy where the prose was more poetic than straightforward. George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire is the primary example, and possibly influence, in this more straightforward form of prose that dominates modern fantasy. Even all the new coming writers, at the time that I'm writing this, primarily follow in Martin's school of prose. The King of Elfland's Daughter sometimes reads like a medieval chivalric romance, without all the "thees" and "thous." In fact, the book is written like someone giving you a historical record/chivalric romance of what transpired between Erl and Elfland. However, my one critique of this, is that we are not told this upfront, we find out later when the historian writer breaks the fourth wall (for lack of a better term) for the first time. I don't mind this narration style, but it feels like Dunsany decided to tack it on later.
Hmm...Guess I can see how Wolfe was influenced too.
In terms of characters, it's a tricky analysis. The King of Elfland's Daughter is not written like a traditional fantasy book, as I have said, so there's little dialogue overall and almost always Dunsany's omniscient narration. The characters don't develop via internal thoughts and emotions, but more through their progression and placing in the story. It is primarily Alveric and Orion and later a troll named Lurulu whose perspectives occupy the text the most. Lirazel, the titular character, isn't shown that much and it's disappointing. We do still get important scenes with her and her emotional well-being and choices do turn the plot onto significant developments, however she isn't there as much. She's a kind and beautiful elf who is caught between the love of her humans husband and son and the love of her homeland. That was such potential to explore. Alveric's character development is...odd. He is mostly featured in the story before Orion's birth, but afterward he is shown more spottily on his tiring journey to find Lirazel. He obviously cares for his wife, but it appears that during the journey he gradually lost his wits in a way. This "downfall" happens parallel to Orion's growing up and hunting of unicorns and the gradually leaking of Elfland's denizens into the human world. Come to think of it, it is also parallel to Lirazel remaining frozen in time with her father on his throne. More on all this in a bit, but Alveric does kind of take a back seat to the rest of the plot as it is not through his efforts that he finds Orion and Lirazel again. Even more interestingly, Alveric is set up to be the hero and the beginning (or at least in the first parts of the book), but after Lirazel's return to Elfland, Dunsany pulls the rug up from underneath us. The normally, human fantasy king-knight is not the hero of the story. Even at the very ending, when some of Elfland's essence has seeped through and rooted itself in Erl, and although Alveric, Orion, and Lirazel all do reunite, Alveric is not with his wife and son in the garden (if I read that part right). Hmm...
Orion has the most development. Being half-human, half-elf it's very clever how Dunsany plays with his mixed heritage and being in-between them. Whereas his father is constantly venturing through Earth's season-changing wilds, and his mother is dormant in Elfland's eternal castle, Orion keeps returning to the twilight border between our world and Elfland. He is the one who is between going to the place between. Everyone is Erl is expectant of Orion to be their magic king, but he just wants to hunt. He starts hunting with the troll Lurulu; specifically hunting unicorns from Elfland in the wilds around Erl, adding more to the in between symbolism. Orion clearly wants the human world and Elfland together, he wants his purpose and his parents back. This fusion of Erl and Elfland is an interesting theme running throughout the book. Some of the humans want Elfland's magic, others, like the Freer (a priest basically), don't. Lirazel, the unicorns, and the trolls want to venture into the human world for, respectively, her family and to satiate their curiosity. However, Lirazel's father wants Elfland to no longer be touched by humans. Although the ending is happy for everyone, Dunsany hints at mixed feelings that this fusion would bring. Perhaps he commentating on the division between the rational and the emotional, or the real and the fantastical. Who knows? I might be looking too deep there. Nonetheless, Orion has a fascinating journey and development.
Lurulu was an interesting addition. He's a troll with a genuine interest in the human world. How he marvels at the natural beauty of Erl is reminiscent of a baby being mesmerized by all the new things around them. It's interesting to see a troll, a creature usually associated with evil, just be a genuinely curious, little guy. Sure, like Lirazel there's things about the human world that are difficult for him to adjust to, but he is genuinely interested in it all.
The King of Elfland's Daughter is an interesting and beautiful, little fantasy book. A product of an era of poetic prose being the norm and certain ideas and tropes before there were, well, tropes. Dunsany dedicated this book to his wife and I can see that it is a fantastical romp that wants to tell a story, not an essay secretly disguised as a story, nor some in your face allegory or morality tale. It's a story about two worlds coming together. And although that fusion can bring conflicting thoughts, it is still ultimately beautiful.
In a medieval-ish area of England called Erl, a parliament no longer wants a human king despite how well they have served them. They want to be ruled by a magic king. So Alveric, son of the king, is tasked with crossing over the twilight border into Elfland to meet and marry Lirazel, the titular King of Elfand's Daughter. Alveric takes her back to Erl and they are wedded and have a son named Orion, but the happiness is short-lived. Lirazel can't adjust to the world of humans and is summoned back to Elfland by her father. Alveric goes on a fruitless quest to find her; fruitless, because the King of Elfland has used his runes and magic to hide Elfland from him. And Orion is raised by the hunters Oth and Threl and the witch Ziroonderel, never truly knowing his parents, but constantly venturing to the gloaming border between "the fields we know" and Elfland. Soon, the denizens of Elfland spill over into Erl, and it seems the borders of both worlds are being effaced.
Lord Dunsany's writings, not just The King of Elfland's Daughter, were inspirational to many later writers of fantasy (and horror), most notably J. R. R. Tolkien. Gene Wolfe, Michael Moorcock, Ursula K. Le Guin, Robert E. Howard, H. P. Lovecraft, Arthur C. Clarke, Jorge Luis Borges, David Eddings, Peter S. Beagle, and Neil Gaiman--who provided an introduction for this edition--were also inspired, and if you've read any of their works, you can see how. I first came across Dunsany when reading Le Guin's essay "[b:From Elfland to Poughkeepsie|68036|From Elfland to Poughkeepsie|Ursula K. Le Guin|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png|65964]" where she exalts his fantasy prose for not only being beautiful but doing its job of keeping readers in a fantasy world. However, she also states that many new fantasy writers try to imitate his prose rather than producing their own, making Dunsay "the First Terrible Fate that Awaiteth Unwary Beginners in Fantasy."
Basically, Dunsany is a big deal in the world of fantasy, even if you've never heard of him or read him. I can definitely see how this book influenced Tolkien, Moorcock, Le Guin, and Lovecraft. Tolkien, because of a love between a human man and an elf woman--the story was published a year before Tolkien wrote, but did not yet publish, Beren and Lúthien's romance a.k.a the precursors to Aragorn and Arwen. At the same time there is a theme in The King of Elfland's Daughter about how inconsequential the passage of Time is for Elfland in contrast to the human world, which is also reminiscent of the humans versus elves mindset over immortality in Middle-earth. For Moorcock, I thought that Alveric's magical sword was influential on Elric of Melniboné's magical, soul-sucking sword, but I was apparently mistaken; that right goes to Poul Anderson's [b:The Broken Sword|40500762|The Broken Sword|Poul Anderson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1528569301l/40500762._SY75_.jpg|1205843]. I'm guessing the Pegana stories were more influential on Moorcock. For Le Guin, it's mostly his prose, more on that in a bit, but also his descriptions of nature. Le Guin did not always details nature in her works, but I can see the influence. As for Lovecraft, you can see the influence only a few times here, but the brief descriptions of a unicorn bleeding out and being beheaded certainly calls to mind some of Lovecraft's more fleshy horrors. Simultaneously, there are some brief mentions of some ancient, unknown power coursing throughout Elfland and the nature of the human world, though it isn't eldritch like Lovecraft.
Okay, now on to the review...
Off the bat, Dunsany's prose is absolutely, fucking gorgeous! Sure, it's flowery, but not too flowery. At least, for me. Though it can be a wordy and can make the paragraphs and chapter seem much longer than what they are. Sometimes, Dunsany repeats the exact, same multi-word adjectives and descriptions for certain things which it can add to the tediousness. Once you get the hang of it, you're good. And the pacing is still very fair. Still, it's all beautifully worded and constructed. Dunsany's prose belongs to an era of fantasy literature that we're not seeing as much anymore in this post-2020 world. Hell...We probably haven't seen it since maybe the 90s. The King of Elfland's Daughter belongs to the era of fantasy where the prose was more poetic than straightforward. George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire is the primary example, and possibly influence, in this more straightforward form of prose that dominates modern fantasy. Even all the new coming writers, at the time that I'm writing this, primarily follow in Martin's school of prose. The King of Elfland's Daughter sometimes reads like a medieval chivalric romance, without all the "thees" and "thous." In fact, the book is written like someone giving you a historical record/chivalric romance of what transpired between Erl and Elfland. However, my one critique of this, is that we are not told this upfront, we find out later when the historian writer breaks the fourth wall (for lack of a better term) for the first time. I don't mind this narration style, but it feels like Dunsany decided to tack it on later.
Hmm...Guess I can see how Wolfe was influenced too.
In terms of characters, it's a tricky analysis. The King of Elfland's Daughter is not written like a traditional fantasy book, as I have said, so there's little dialogue overall and almost always Dunsany's omniscient narration. The characters don't develop via internal thoughts and emotions, but more through their progression and placing in the story. It is primarily Alveric and Orion and later a troll named Lurulu whose perspectives occupy the text the most. Lirazel, the titular character, isn't shown that much and it's disappointing. We do still get important scenes with her and her emotional well-being and choices do turn the plot onto significant developments, however she isn't there as much. She's a kind and beautiful elf who is caught between the love of her humans husband and son and the love of her homeland. That was such potential to explore. Alveric's character development is...odd. He is mostly featured in the story before Orion's birth, but afterward he is shown more spottily on his tiring journey to find Lirazel. He obviously cares for his wife, but it appears that during the journey he gradually lost his wits in a way. This "downfall" happens parallel to Orion's growing up and hunting of unicorns and the gradually leaking of Elfland's denizens into the human world. Come to think of it, it is also parallel to Lirazel remaining frozen in time with her father on his throne. More on all this in a bit, but Alveric does kind of take a back seat to the rest of the plot as it is not through his efforts that he finds Orion and Lirazel again. Even more interestingly, Alveric is set up to be the hero and the beginning (or at least in the first parts of the book), but after Lirazel's return to Elfland, Dunsany pulls the rug up from underneath us. The normally, human fantasy king-knight is not the hero of the story. Even at the very ending, when some of Elfland's essence has seeped through and rooted itself in Erl, and although Alveric, Orion, and Lirazel all do reunite, Alveric is not with his wife and son in the garden (if I read that part right). Hmm...
Orion has the most development. Being half-human, half-elf it's very clever how Dunsany plays with his mixed heritage and being in-between them. Whereas his father is constantly venturing through Earth's season-changing wilds, and his mother is dormant in Elfland's eternal castle, Orion keeps returning to the twilight border between our world and Elfland. He is the one who is between going to the place between. Everyone is Erl is expectant of Orion to be their magic king, but he just wants to hunt. He starts hunting with the troll Lurulu; specifically hunting unicorns from Elfland in the wilds around Erl, adding more to the in between symbolism. Orion clearly wants the human world and Elfland together, he wants his purpose and his parents back. This fusion of Erl and Elfland is an interesting theme running throughout the book. Some of the humans want Elfland's magic, others, like the Freer (a priest basically), don't. Lirazel, the unicorns, and the trolls want to venture into the human world for, respectively, her family and to satiate their curiosity. However, Lirazel's father wants Elfland to no longer be touched by humans. Although the ending is happy for everyone, Dunsany hints at mixed feelings that this fusion would bring. Perhaps he commentating on the division between the rational and the emotional, or the real and the fantastical. Who knows? I might be looking too deep there. Nonetheless, Orion has a fascinating journey and development.
Lurulu was an interesting addition. He's a troll with a genuine interest in the human world. How he marvels at the natural beauty of Erl is reminiscent of a baby being mesmerized by all the new things around them. It's interesting to see a troll, a creature usually associated with evil, just be a genuinely curious, little guy. Sure, like Lirazel there's things about the human world that are difficult for him to adjust to, but he is genuinely interested in it all.
The King of Elfland's Daughter is an interesting and beautiful, little fantasy book. A product of an era of poetic prose being the norm and certain ideas and tropes before there were, well, tropes. Dunsany dedicated this book to his wife and I can see that it is a fantastical romp that wants to tell a story, not an essay secretly disguised as a story, nor some in your face allegory or morality tale. It's a story about two worlds coming together. And although that fusion can bring conflicting thoughts, it is still ultimately beautiful.