It is nicely written but I found it a trifle plodding until near the end when the story stepped up a gear and we were in a chase to the end.30-odd years before Tolkein published “The Lord of the Rings”, a British woman named Hope Mirrlees wrote a fantasy called “Lud-in-the-Mist”. I was looking for some deeper meaning but maybe it isn't there, maybe this is just a whimsical tale and that is okay (or equally possibly I missed the meaning). I was reminded constantly of AA Milne's The King's Breakfast, where the Queen says, There is a tweeness in the names and, although in some ways timeless, there are candles and frocks and horses for travelling around, putting the story firmly in the past. It seems to be a story of a small country where the people have removed any excitement from their lives - they stay in all winter evenings but have summer get togethers - and fear the fairies over the Debateable Hills. Once I had managed that I could enjoy the story.

It took me a few pages to settle into Hope Mirrlees writing style, with dense sentences. At the philosophical level, the themes that motivate the story are hammered a bit too hard, given their obviousness.īut even so this was a wonderful book to finally read. At the story level, a repeated plot mechanism is the false tale - pretty much all obstacles for the main characters not of their own doing is caused by someone simply misleading them. Readers looking for a story will not be disappointed, nor will readers looking for highly sympathetic and believable characters, or interesting insights into the ephemeral effects of reason and the 'fiction' of law.Ĭompared to Little, Big which I consider perfect, I had two issues with Lud-in-the-Mist. Since Mirrlees was a poet, I expected that style to maintain through the book, but the text became much less dense after a few chapters as plot and characterization took over. The book begins in heavy descriptive mode - both enchanting and exhausting. There is the distinctive but clear author's voice and rich prose, there is the setting of events in the normal world but near to and constantly affected by the fairy world, there is the deep history behind the events of the story, and there is minimal element of actual magic to perhaps no more than simple delusion. That's no surprise given that his favorite is Crowley's Little, Big, which this book from 1926 resembles in many ways. Apparently Neil Gaiman in a foreword to a more recent edition calls this one of his ten favorite books. Every once in a while my deep dives into my library pull up a treasure.

Lud in the mist book