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Book Review: Lud-in-the-Mist
Jul. 30th, 2016 09:16 amI actually finished Hope Mirlees’ Lud-in-the-Mist a couple weeks ago, but the intervening time has been largely swallowed by existential panic so I didn’t write a review at the time.
However, I did enjoy it very much. It’s a pleasure to read for its own sake - I particularly liked the surfeit of lovely and poetic names; there’s something to be said for naming one’s hero Chanticleer; and the writing as a whole is beautiful and fluid. And it’s also interesting to think of it in conjunction with the fantasy genre as a whole, because Lud-in-the-Mist was written long before Tolkien became the presumed template for fantasy novels and therefore flouts the template without even meaning too.
There is a quest in Lud-in-the-Mist, for instance, but it doesn’t start until the book is almost over. Most of the book is about Nathaniel Chanticleer’s life in the determinedly bourgeois capital city, Lud-in-the-Mist - it’s as if the first two books of The Lord of the Rings were set in the Shire - and the adventure plot only kicks in at the end, and even then we only get about half of it. He sets out on his quest, and we see him he complete part of it, and then he crosses the border into Fairyland and... we follow only partway in, and then cut forward to his successful return.
It’s fantasy as a domestic novel rather than fantasy as an adventure yarn (with a little adventure yarn thrown in at the end for spice).
However, I did enjoy it very much. It’s a pleasure to read for its own sake - I particularly liked the surfeit of lovely and poetic names; there’s something to be said for naming one’s hero Chanticleer; and the writing as a whole is beautiful and fluid. And it’s also interesting to think of it in conjunction with the fantasy genre as a whole, because Lud-in-the-Mist was written long before Tolkien became the presumed template for fantasy novels and therefore flouts the template without even meaning too.
There is a quest in Lud-in-the-Mist, for instance, but it doesn’t start until the book is almost over. Most of the book is about Nathaniel Chanticleer’s life in the determinedly bourgeois capital city, Lud-in-the-Mist - it’s as if the first two books of The Lord of the Rings were set in the Shire - and the adventure plot only kicks in at the end, and even then we only get about half of it. He sets out on his quest, and we see him he complete part of it, and then he crosses the border into Fairyland and... we follow only partway in, and then cut forward to his successful return.
It’s fantasy as a domestic novel rather than fantasy as an adventure yarn (with a little adventure yarn thrown in at the end for spice).
