Book Review: The King of Elfland's Daughter

I'm enough of a nerd to know this is Waterhouse, one of my favorite painters


This will probably always be one of the most important books to me.

That doesn't mean it's always my favorite; it's not the most fun to read, or the most psychologically-insightful, or even the most entertaining. It's written in a somewhat odd voice that feels strangely out of place; it feels older than it really is. But to me, this is the most important fantasy book I own. If you haven't read it, I can't recommend it enough.

Elfland is apparently a "prose poem," a term I've seen used but admit I don't really get. I think what it means, however, is that the writing doesn't flow the way you might expect. Most fantasy novels fly off the page; you read for plot, for characters, for romance and adventure and energy. Elfland is nothing of the sort: it's slow, meditative, beautiful. If you read for plot, you'll get through it quickly (it's short! My copy is 160 pages!) but you'll not really have read it at all.

I read it out loud. This sounds silly, I know, but hear me out. You don't need to actually read out loud, but instead, hear the words as you read them; imagine reading it out loud. I admit, I probably actually did read it out loud from time to time; I read this book for the first time in a hospital bed, anxious that I had killed myself. I wouldn't recommend replication, but I admit it helped the dreamlike atmosphere of the book wash over me.

You read Elfland for the feel. It's beautiful and weird and insubstantial. It feels like a myth, something told around a campfire on a winter evening a thousand years ago, by people who actually know what swords feel like in the hand. You'll know you're doing it right if you can feel how you'd actually deliver each sentence, the words you'd stress and the words you'd whisper, when you'd pause and let a scene sink.

It's, at its core, a romance, I should mention. Not the kind we usually get nowadays; there are no 'spicy' scenes or anything like that. The characters definitely do not feel like "real people." If that's what you want, this isn't the right book, probably.

I recommend it enormously, but you have to go to it and let it wash over you.

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