A review by mariebrunelm
Realms of Imagination: Essays from the Wide Worlds of Fantasy by Tanya Kirk, Matthew Sangster

informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

The British Library recently held an exhibition all about fantasy, its origins, ramifications and contemporary applications. No, I couldn’t go, and yes, it’s a tragedy, but thankfully I received the catalogue as a Yule gift, so I’m not too frustrated.

This beauty holds together 20 chapters written by different authors, illustrated with exhibition pieces (not all of them are in there, but there are many). I won’t go into detail of every single chapter because we’d be here for a while, but the gist of it is there are four sections: “fairy and folk tales”, “epics and quests”, “weird and uncanny” and “portals and worlds”. Inside each one, there are chapters defining the concepts and others taking a deep dive into specific incarnations of each notion. My favourite chapter may have been Sofia Samatar’s “The Everything Book”, but they are all equally fascinating, although some of them were surprisingly short. But that’s just the PhD student talking, always hungry for more.

As Neil Gaiman says in the preface, be ready to write down tons of book recommendations ! The authors all do a great job of highlighting fantasy from all different parts of the world, and not only European fantasy. I loved it for that. This book is great for literature students, but I think it’s also accessible for the nerdy, academia-oriented fans of fantasy.