The bourgois town of Lud-in-the-mist has banned fairy-fruit and everything connected to Fairyland is considered obscene. But when children of the town are tricked into eating fairy-fruit and suffer the consequences, the Mayor Nat Chanticleer has to face his fears and find out how to rescue them.

Unfortunately no summary can capture the rich variety of this book and the sense of history and society it captures.

Anyone who likes fantasy to say something interesting about Mankind.

The exquisite and insightful use of metaphor. I also liked the way the story is so ruthlessly just. Often in novels, the happy ending or the feelings of the main charcters (and therefore the reader) dictate the outcome. In this book the law is supreme and ends can never justify the means. This lends this often very comic book a maturity and a tragedy lacking in most fantasy novels.

I can't think of anything not to like about this book.

Find out everything I could about Hope Mirrlees - and I discovered she went to the same college as I did! Unfortunately this was her only fantasy novel.

Very happy, very thoughtful. It isn't a straight forward book but it celebrates the good in the ordinary and the extraordinary, which is unusual.

It provides a masterclass in using metaphor and simile, it's beautifully written and it's a great story.

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Created Oct 11, 2005 at 10:02am • Submit your own review...