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Reading fantasy fiction today, it’s very obvious just how much of an influence J.R.R. Tolkien had on the genre. There are elves, dwarves, world building, and magical shenanigans as far as the eye can see. This is fine. I’m all for it when it suits me. However, I’ve been wanting to read some fantasy from before his time to see what it was like and get an idea if maybe some of these may have influenced him. To get things started, I decided to give The King of Elfland’s Daughter by Lord Dunsany a go. It was actually quite pleasant and very different from Tolkien. If anything, it was easier to see the impact he had on C.S. Lewis’ work (which he admits himself).
The story is about a young noble, named Alveric, who has been sent to Elfland to marry its king’s daughter (Lirazel) so that magic will spread to their mundane human realm. Some of the more prominent members of the village hope that it will bring fame and notoriety to their land as well. Alveric succeeds in bringing her back, and Lirazel seems a-okay with the situation despite all of the bloodshed he committed in getting her. They marry, spend a few years together, and have a child together (a son, Orion). However, Alveric doesn’t treat her very well, constantly trying to force human ways on her, which struck me as a weird choice given that everyone wanted her there for her magical elven-ness. Eventually she has enough and is whisked back to Elfland. As the years pass, Alveric sets out to try and find her, which proves fruitless and slightly insane. All the while, Orion is growing up and doing his own thing. So, readers are left to wonder if they all ever get reunited, all the while we see continued interactions between Elfland and the human world, along with all that entails.
It’s a very pretty story. Dunsany has a beautiful way of describing things, and it is very concise. He’s like the opposite of Tolkien, who would go on for quite some time when describing something. Also, some of Dunsany’s choices for how things were was really interesting. I very much liked how he described the throne of the elf king as being partially made up of music and mirage. It takes on a very ethereal quality that way, as opposed to so much other fantasy where a throne will be a very tangible, very opulent thing. I also really liked how the human realm was simply called “the fields we know”. No fancy name, or typical village name, or whatever. It also very much captures the essence of a person’s home town for better or worse.
There are times too where the story simply describes things in the elven world as the stuff of songs, which I kind of liked. It’s very vague, but it feels like it’s the only way that the narrator can think of to describe it. It’s like someone trying to explain something from a higher dimension to someone in ours. We’ve just got space and time to work with, and the narrator wants to describe something beyond that and is lost for words.
The characters themselves come off a bit flat on the whole, but the whole story feels like a fairy tale, where tropes and archetypes reign supreme, so it works here. It is odd that a mischievous little troll can arguably be the most fleshed out character in the story, though. Lirazel can be very simple, and downright childlike in some ways. Orion just cares about going hunting. Alveric’s descent into madness is mildly interesting. On the whole, though, this isn’t a character driven story.
Ultimately, The King of Elfland’s Daughter is trying to whisk readers to another world for a short time. One like ours (the fields we know), but also different (Elfland). It’s also a warning that people should be sure of what they want, as things do go off the rails as magic seeps out of Elfland into the human world. It’s very much a book worth reading for people curious about early fantasy novels. The beauty of the prose alone is a very good reason to read this book.
Pennywhether
August 24, 2024