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Mar 02, 2009

Sandi rated it:

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”. Neil Gaiman wrote an introduction to the edition I read and I can see that he meant every word. His own “Stardust” draws very heavily on “Lud-in-the-Mist”, especially in setting and tone. Other recent novels that are reminiscent of “Lud-in-the-Mist” are “Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell” by Susannah Clarke and “Little, Big” by John Crowley. They all share More...

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Jan 16, 2009

reed rated it:

Neil Gaiman raved about this book, so I read it. I wish I could have read it without knowing anything about it -- but I still liked it. It was written in the 1920's -- before fantasy tropes were so set in stone -- so it goes in directions you don't expect it to. Also, it's as though the author never heard of the idea that fantasy is a juvenile and disreputable genre, so she takes herself and her book seriously and uses fantasy to explore real and important ideas. More...

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Dec 08, 2010

JackieB rated it:

This started out as though it was going to be a gently comic book and then got darker and more sinister although it still had comic moments. It was about an imaginary country which bordered on fairy land but which had broken off all contact with fairies and ignored their existence. However the fairies were trying to change that. It had loads of twists and turns and there were times when you weren't completely sure who was working for the fairies and who was not but appeared to be.You also onl More...

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Apr 30, 2011

Ea rated it:

The oddness of this story can be detected just by checking out the main character. Most fantasy heroes are not round, stodgy, middle-aged men who are respected pillars of the community.

But Hope Mirrlees' enchanting fantasy "Lud-in-the-Mist" defies many such fantasy cliches, written as if "The Hobbit" had been spun up by Lord Dunsany. It's a sweet pastoral story that slowly blossoms out into a very unique story -- there's a little murder mystery, an amusing village More...

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Apr 21, 2011

Ann rated it:

Hope Mirrlees is an often overlooked writer of fantasy. I found this book to be interesting, but if you are looking for a page-turner this isn't the book. The story is meted out like straw on a lazy brook.
There in a the small village of Lud in the Mist in the country of Dorimare lives Mayor and High Senechal Nathaniel Chanticlee. He and most of the citizens of the place have languished in inattention in the peaceful beauty of their town where the Dapple and Dawl rivers meet. The terrify More...

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Sep 13, 2010

Abigail rated it:

I found Lud-in-the-Mist after Neil Gaiman recommended it (I believe in the audio version of Stardust). What a find! This is a gem of a book. The language is amazingly beautiful. This is what purple prose is *trying* to be.

Lud-in-the-Mist is a fairytale about a village on the edge of Fairy that has tried, for years, to deny the fairy half of its heritage. The resulting imbalance creates trouble, kidnapping, and murder, which must be addressed by the town's day-dreaming, scatter-brain More...

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May 13, 2010

Rusty rated it:

Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees, written pre-1950: This is truly a fairy tale for adults. I was at first confused as I tried to understand the story line but in the end it was really quite simple. Lud-in-the-Mist is a town situated between two rivers - the Dapple and the Dawl. The Dapple originates beyond the Debatable Hills west of Lud-in-the-Mist, in Fairyland. Fairy things were once revered by the residents but when Duke Aubrey was expelled from the country, Dorimare, all things fairy b More...

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Feb 16, 2010

Jenni rated it:

I bought this a long time ago - on a short break from schoolwork in the Easter before my A levels, I think it was, my Dad having encouraged me to have that break as a few days by myself. I had a day in Durham and a day in Carlisle, staying in B&Bs, and in Carlisle I found this in a second-hand bookshop.

There was no sense then that this was a feted book, lauded by the likes of Neil Gaiman; it has a very old-fashioned, American cover and it cost me a princely 75p by the looks of it. It More...

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Jan 05, 2011

Alice rated it:

Fairytales are generally associated with childrens stories, such as Brothers Grimm et all, however, having recently read Neil Gaiman's 'Stardust' this peaked my interest.

What initially attracted me to the book, however, was not Startdust's author, but the book cover. There's the phrase, 'never judge a book by it's cover' but I couldn't help but want to read this book based on the cover. I'm glad I chose it as well. It was certainly an interesting, if at times somewhat difficult, read. More...

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Sep 08, 2010

Jackson rated it:

More fairytale than fantasy, Lud-in-the-Mist reminds me strongly of The Lord of the Rings. The story draws heavily from folklore, and like Tolkein, Hope Mirrlees is prone to wandering off from time to time. However, Lud is a mere 238 pages, meaning the whole book could fit into some of the more tedious passages in LOTR.

Eccentricities aside, I really enjoyed the story, and found myself growing fond of the main character, Nathaniel Chanticleer. The world of Lud is one where the rule of More...

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Sep 05, 2009

Scott rated it:

For a quick round-up on what happens in the book, I am going with a review from Elisabeth Carey found on Amazon.Com (with a few alterations for clarity and to hide some things). It gives a good, broad description, without giving away anything:

Dorimare is bordered by Fairyland, although these days it does its very best to ignore that fact. Two or three centuries ago, under Duke Aubrey, it was different. Trade between the two lands was thriving, and the people of Dorimare enjoyed eating

More...

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Mar 01, 2009

Ryan rated it:

The people of Lud-in-the-Mist enjoy their steady, structured lives, and fear the mystical stories of the mischievous Faeries who live in the West, and especially fear the influence of their magical Fairy Fruit, which can supposedly turn the most able-minded citizen who eats it into a poetic, quixotic, and babbling lunatic. When the Mayor of Lud-in-the-Mist, Master Nathaniel Chanticleer, discovers that his own son has eaten this forbidden fairy fruit, he must unravel the mystery of how this contr More...

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Aug 14, 2009

Zen rated it:

ahhhh this rocked!!! It's funny how this mostly takes place in the Real World (as opposed to Fairyland) and Neil Gaiman's Stardust mostly takes place in Fairyland (not the Real World), and yet there is more magic in a single serif on any letter of any word on any page of Lud-in-the-Mist than there is in the ENTIRE BOOK of Stardust.

I should note that its handling of race is weird -- Tolkien-style "all the non-white people are from somewhere else". Indigo people appear to be More...

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Nov 13, 2009

Leif rated it:

Resisting the temptation to say things like "considering its age" is difficult for a book like this one. Lud-In-The-Mist is a vibrant, nuanced, and very very tempting classic fantasy text, an engaging story that asks the reader to examine the relationship between "fairy" and the mundane. It's a bit damp in parts, and the ending is perhaps not as clearly positive as it might believe (I still have trouble with the valedictory accord lent the Duke) but on the whole this is a r More...

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Dec 16, 2009

Mare rated it:

Absolutely brilliant. Gorgeous, gorgeous writing. I need to write a real review of this. I loved this book to bits.

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Apr 02, 2011

Zeborah rated it:

This is the mode that Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell echoes. The entry is a little slow (so a glance some years back wasn't sufficient to pull me straight in), but that slowness covers a great depth and wit.

The parallelism of the delusions of Faerie and Law was wonderful, subtly made manifest in the way the Law refers to fairy fruit as silk, and then when Nat's house is searched for silken vanities, fairy fruit hidden by one of the Silent People is found instead.

And every w More...

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Apr 30, 2009

Scott rated it:

This was an ok book, and was important because of the authors it has influenced throughout fantasy. Other than that, I thought Mirrlees was a bit too verbose and would go off on descriptive tangents that had nothing to do with the story. While the descriptions were well done, they had no relevance and seemed like filler.

Here is one such passage of overly descriptive prose that I actually enjoyed (the other ones I would just skip/skim over), this is Mirrlees describing the coming dawn More...

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Jan 16, 2011

Tess rated it:

I don't quite know what to say about this book except that is was a wonderful read. The story starts out slowly, taking its time to introduce the reader to Lud-in-the-Mist and its characters, and then eventually dives into a plot, that is mystery, detective-story and melancholic, playful fantasy all rolled into one. The language is beautiful - sometimes almost too flowery, but it fits the mood (and here I regret that I didn't have the chance to read the English version).
What I particularly More...

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Jul 28, 2011

Jen rated it:

Sorry, but this fantasy was very dated. I read it because it was touted by Neil Gaiman, and in its day was probably very innovative in its use of the fantasy genre, but ... So, the town of Lud is quite conservative, having outlawed all aspects of Fairy, until the Mayor's son is fed fairy fruit, and his sister and her friends at the local Ladies Academy are also fed the fruit. This causes Nathaniel Chanticleer, the Mayor, to pursue the culprits and overturn the conservative factions of the town More...

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Jan 07, 2012

Simon rated it:

A fairy tale for adults. Both serious and light, this is a story that works on more than one level. The surface narrative is an intriguing story and mystery that gradually builds tension and is delivered with a pleasant, leisurely prose style. But also the author is trying to say something about society and the meaning of life.

Stylistically, I found echoes of this in Jack Vance's "Lyonesse" books. Certainly I think if you liked one then you'll like the other. But don't read More...

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Sep 15, 2010

Tiffany rated it:

Enticed by the promises of a great many favorite writers, I took up Lud-In-The-Mist expecting a change in what female fantasy could be.

The name, the time, the author's story, all attracted me. Despite this, i couldn't manage to lose myself in it.

Essentially, for me, it didn't hold up.
I found the characters shrill and predictable, the bewildered goodies were good, and the baddies just as you found them.
As I read, I had a sense that I was waiting for the lit More...

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Jun 16, 2010

Phoenixfalls rated it:

I don't think I'm well-read enough to review this book -- as is the case with many British writers of that period, Mirrlees is far better classically educated than I am, and I'm sure I missed quite a few of her references. However, I now firmly agree with Neil Gaiman that this is "the single most beautiful, solid, unearthly, and unjustifiably forgotten novel of the twentieth century" so I felt I should attempt to review it here in the hopes that I get a few more people to seek it out. More...

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Jul 05, 2010

Lindsay rated it:

*Dear other reviewers: Neil Gaiman is paid to review books/write blurbs, intros, etc. Don't put too much stake in his reported opinion. (Or, I would say, in his opinion, but that's a separate matter.) Stardust is much more based on The King of Elfland's Daughter, which was written two years before Lud-in-the-Mist, and Gaiman ALSO wrote the intro for the new edition of that book, and it is a much better book.*

The synopsis of the premise said that “the law-abiding inhabitants More...

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Mar 27, 2010

Elizabeth rated it:

This is the best book I have read in a long time. It's the first time in a couple of years that I have not simply barreled through a book to get everything out of it as quickly as possible; I wanted to pay attention to every word and sentence and paragraph in this, and not because it was one of those annoying books that hides clues about what's really going on in seemingly-innocuous details.

This is what Virginia Woolf wanted to write, in Orlando. (Actually, no, it's not, the gender More...

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Jun 27, 2010

Nicholas rated it:

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1464028.html

I was inspired to buy this by Farah Mendlesohn's Rhetorics of Fantasy, which ranks it as a key exemplar of one of the four modes of fantasy story-telling, the 'liminal' in which the boundary with the fantastic is hazy and uncertain; other examples being Little, Big (which I bounced off) and the first two Gormenghast books (which I remember loving as a teenager). I think it also fits a lot of Neil Gaiman's work.

I am firmly on the s More...

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Jan 09, 2011

Sessily added it

A recommendation like "The single most beautiful, solid, unearthly, and unjustifiably forgotten novel of the twentieth century" can be a dangerous thing for a book. It suddenly has to live up to the greatness of a book that doesn't actually exist--the one in our mind. Neil Gaiman certainly means it when he says it, but the book doesn't quite live up to his recommendation. The characters are, often, little more than sketches on the page, and their reactions come off as melodramatic--esp More...

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Jan 02, 2009

Kim rated it:

Written in the 1920's, this book is the contemporary of works such as The Lord of the Rings and it reads somewhat similarly. It often quotes made-up songs and poetry and is given to flights of fancy so far out there that I sometimes found it hard to follow. The basic premise was a good one and I enjoyed the story itself, but the characters were fairly silly and hard to sympathize with. The writing was beautiful and amazingly colorful yet I sometimes had trouble paying attention and comprehend More...

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Sep 10, 2008

Jayden rated it:

Let me preface by saying this book was beautiful, but it also wasn't the sort of book I normally like for various reasons. Therefore, some of my critiques of it might be quite biased due to mere preference.

The best part of this book is the way the words flow off the page in so many sweet flavors it's hard to stop eating. The fact that Hope Mirrlees was also a poet is so evident you'd have to wear two eyepatches not to notice. Quite appropriately, the setting of the book is a fantast More...

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Jul 10, 2007

Sean rated it:

Lud-in-the-Mist comes highly recommended, first by the situation of its author (Mirlees was an intimate of Woolf and Eliot, and they both praised some of her work) and second by a number of modern authors who claim that it is a forgotten fantasy masterpiece.

Unfortunately, it is merely okay. I realize that many people think it unfair to judge a book by modern standards, but that's exactly the standard that I have for books I read—and there are any number of truly classic novels that c More...

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Apr 02, 2008

Lisa rated it:

"Lud-in-the-Mist" bzw. "Flucht ins Feenland" wurde in den 20er Jahren geschrieben. Dementsprechend ist die Schreibweise zunächst einmal gewöhnungsbedürftig. Doch dies liegt auch sicherlich an Mirrlees außergewöhnlichem Schreib-Stil, der auf dem ersten Blick hochgestochen und verschwenderisch wirkt. Mit der Zeit lernt man ihn aber zu schätzen. Er ist sehr blumig, ausschweifend, farbenfroh und lebhaft. Als Beispiel im Folgenden ein repräsentatives Zitat: "Hier hatte das Dr More...

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