goomz 's review for:

The King of Elfland's Daughter by Lord Dunsany

5.0

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Normally I'd consider myself pretty cynical but something about this book was just really sincere and beautiful the whole time. Seriously, every page was written beautifully regardless of what it was about. (One of the most incredibly written sections was merely about a goblin sitting in a barn watching time pass.) I think I would've been guilty for expecting fantasy this old (1924!) to be simplistic and pulpy, but instead it was intelligent, florid (extremely—I don't know what half the flowers he mentions are but they just sound pretty), nuanced. Even though Dunsany spends more time with the fields than he does the characters sometimes, the minimal almost-archetypal characters fit the mythical and ancient feel of the story, but he doesn't shortshrift on their emotions—the chapter about Lirazel's homesickness and alienation in Earth is genuinely sorrowful and tragic to read, and likewise the King of Elfland's final decision in the book (which is artfully and poignantly left uncommented on,

Spoiler

after being unable to remove her desire for Earth through spectacle or reason, he quietly removes Elfland's last defenses without saying another word to his crying daughter. Bah, it's so good.

). There's a true sense of the exotic between the two worlds, and you can feel the temptation both the worlds have on each other, and importantly, what the exotic can do in the minds of people in their homelands. It's the same kind of temptation and beauty you can see in nature, sunsets, art, religion, drugs, dreams...

It's really good.

Gah. I'll never write this well.