Beyond the Fields We Know (or books about Faerie)

[Teresa Edgerton]

That would be Faerie (or Faery) the place. You might as easily call it Elfland, the Elfin Marches, or any number of other names. Sometimes it's so far away that you can't possibly get there without a magical intervention -- sometimes its borders are plainly marked -- sometimes it's so close that it overlaps with our own reality, and you can wander in without even knowing it ... until something remarkable happens.

Books about the interaction of humans with Faerie came up in the Urban Fantasy thread, and many interesting books that fall into both those categories are under discussion there. But it seems that some of us have landed on a bit of the Wandering Sod because we were beginning to stray out of Time as well as the World of Men.

So here is a place where we might discuss books about Faerie that do not feature a modern Urban setting.

To get the conversation started, here are some books that were already mentioned:

Lord Dunsany's important work King Of Elfland's Daughter
Hope Mirlees - Lud In The Mist
Susanna Clarke's wonderful Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
(these suggestions courtesy of Gollum)

Queen of Air and Darkness", *The Merman’s Children* Poul Anderson (excellent work, languishing in undeserved oblivion)
*Ill Met By Moonlight* Sarah A. Hoyt (very good Shakespearean fantasy)
*Thomas Rhymer* Ellen Kushner
*Prince Ivan*, *Firebird*, *Golden Horde* Peter Morwood
*The Shining Falcon*, *A Strange and Ancient Name* Josepha Sherman
(these suggestions courtesy of beenorthern)

I will throw in a few suggestions of my own:

The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson (which I think far superior to The Merman's Children and more relevent to our discussion)
Two of my favorite Tam Lin retellings Winter Rose by Patricia McKillip, and The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Pope
Some beautiful books by C. J. Cherryh, The Dreamstone and its sequel The Tree of Swords and Jewels, and the difficult to find Faery in Shadow, also, if we can stretch the point to include Goblins (and as we've already included Mermen, why not) The Goblin Mirror

But what about everyone else -- what are some of your favorite stories involving the lands and the people on the other side of the Debatable Hills?

 

[nixie]

The only one of these I've read is Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell,so completely unqualified to take part in this discussion
One quick question would Feist's Faerie Tale come under this category or Urban Fantasy??

 

[red_temple]

I'm partial to Neil Gaiman's Stardust. It was a nice, quick read that I found to be quite charming.

 

[Adasunshine]

I'm with red_temple. I really enjoyed Stardust and got through it ever so quickly, so easy to read and wonderful, I would recommend it but then I always recommend Gaiman, he's one of my faves!

I'm still reading Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell but am finding it absolutely charming and quintessentially British, English even!

I presently cannot think of any other books I may have come across Faery but if I remember, I shall post!

Nice thread by the way Kelpie!

xx

 

[GOLLUM]

The Merman’s Children - Poul Anderson (excellent work, languishing in undeserved oblivion).

Two of my favorite Tam Lin retellings Winter Rose by Patricia McKillip, and The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Pope

I agree with Anserson's fabulous Broken Sword but I've never heard of The Merman’s Children. What's it about?

Also I'm reading McKillip's Riddlemaster trilogy as part of the Fanatsy Masterwork series and quite enjoying it. It's the first thing I've read by this author although I've known of her by name only, so can you elaborate on Winter Rose???

 

[GOLLUM]

I haven't read the book Beauty yet by Sherri S. Tepper but it's part of their Masterwork series, which usually means quality. Seems to have some faerie themes, anyone read it?

Beauty is certainly a clever book, with Sheri Tepper weaving together a number of faery tales in a novel that spans a thousand years and moves from this world, to a world of imagination, to the land of Faery, and to Hell itself for a short time.

The main character, Beauty, is half-Faery, and must find a way, early in the novel, to avoid marriage, shipment to a nunnery, and a curse that states she will prick her finger on a spindle on her 16th birthday, falling into a sleep for a hundred years. Beauty succeeds in avoiding these fates by making use of a half-sister who, conveniently, can pass for Beauty to those who are not well-acquainted with the girl. As it turns out, this includes virtually everyone, for Beauty has spent her life ignored by the people around her, for reasons having to do with the strange disappearance of her mother, and the rumour that Beauty is both half-Faery and cursed.......

 

[Lissa]

Winter Rose is a redo of a fairy tale, I think. It has been a long time since I read it (if I am thinking of the right one at all!).

Laurell K. Hamilton's Merry Gentry Series would qualify for this category.
A Kiss of Shadow
A Caress of Twilight
Seduced by Moonlight
Stroke of Midnight

All about modern day faerie and the politics of the Seelie and Unseelie Courts. Just be warned the main character is descended from 5 fertility godesses so you can imagine the amout of sex included in theses books.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

The Merman's Children is about what happens to the halfling offspring of the Liri king (the merman of the title) and a human mother when a bishop banishes the "ungodly" sea people from the waters where they have been living -- and in the exodus that follows the king's four children are necessarily left behind. The world they've known is gone, the human world doesn't really want them -- not unless it can mold them into something they were never meant to be. They have to embark on a long, perilous journey in order to find a place for themselves, moving between a number of very well-realized and well-researched medieval settings, with plenty of bloodshed along the way. To my mind, their sexual adventures get just a bit tedious, but otherwise it's a very good book.

Winter Rose is, as stated, heavily influenced by the ballad of Tam Lin. To describe the ways in which it differs from that story would be to give away a lot of the plot. It's typical McKillip: poetic, wistful, full of striking images. Not as tightly plotted as the Riddlemaster books, and the pace is a little slow, because it's a story about emotions and longings, and the lure of the otherworld, rather than any sort of quest or adventure.

Tepper's Beauty (not to be confused with McKinley's book of the same name) -- if I'm remembering it correctly, it's more about fairy tales than it is about fairies (I didn't even remember that part about her being half-fairy herself), and in the end even more about here and now and what the future might be. It's beautifully written but some people might find it a little heavy-handed in terms of certain messages Tepper was trying to get across.

 

[GOLLUM]

Thank you for the update, shall keep a lookout for those books....

 

[BAYLOR]

Faerie Tale By Raymond Feist
Crom Kenneth Flint
Mythago Woods by Robert Holdstock

 

[BAYLOR]

The King of Elfland's Daughter by Lord Dunsany

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Jo Walton's Among Others is an excellent modern depiction of the faerie. ( it may straddle urban, bit only just.)

It surprises me I can't think of more right now. My first fantasy - coming in 2017 - is a fairy setting (the glens of Antrim, a fairy Mecca) and I best get more knowledgeable about the genre. I shall nick the recs from here

 

[hitmouse]

Little Big by John Crowley. Essential to this list, I would argue.
Almost anything by Diana Wynne Jones, Alan Garner.

 

[Extollager]

Not to be missed: J. M. Barrie's play Mary Rose. Here's what I wrote about it some years ago for the New York C. S. Lewis Society:


Poe said that the death of a beautiful woman was the most poetical topic in the world. Not the death, but the disappearance, of a woman or girl is a choice idea for modern writers of fantasy.* Joan Lindsay’s fiction Picnic at Hanging Rock and the Twilight Zone teleplay “Little Girl Lost” by Richard Matheson are examples. Perhaps these are indebted to Mary Rose, a 1920 play that has been overshadowed by its author’s Peter Pan.



On vacation in the Hebrides with her parents, eleven-year-old Mary Rose disappeared from the small island where she was sketching. Twenty days later she was seen there again, and had no sense of the missing time. Her parents didn’t tell her about her disappearance or the efforts to find her, but, when a young man, Simon, courted her seven years later, they told him the story. A few years after that, the young married couple, parents of a little boy, came to “The Island That Likes To Be Visited,” and Mary Rose vanished again. Unmarked by time, she returned once more, after a hiatus of 25 years, during which period her husband, parents, and son suffered directly or indirectly because of their loss. The story’s present, however, is five years later, after Mary Rose, her husband, and her parents have died, when the son, who had run away to Australia, has come back to England and his mother’s home.



Lewis recalled Barrie’s play in a 1933 letter to Arthur Greeves. An “old haunting suspicion… raises its head in every temptation – that there is something else than God – some other country (Mary Rose… Mary Rose) into which He forbids us to trespass – some kind of delight wh[ich] …. would be real delight if only we were allowed to get it. [In fact, such a] thing just isn’t there.”



J. R. R. Tolkien saw a theatrical performance at some time, and read the play, first published in 1928. He comments on it in Note F to “On Fairy-Stories.” The 2008 expanded edition of the essay, edited by Verlyn Flieger and Douglas Anderson, contains a few additional lines on the play. It troubled Tolkien. Tolkien’s published note says that Barrie’s version of the common tale of humans who have spent years among the fairies is “painful… and can easily be made diabolic” if the performance changes the playwright’s conclusion by implying that the fairies –not Barrie’s angels – for the third time take Mary Rose or, rather, her ghost (thus depriving her of heaven). Tolkien’s manuscript addition says more about the “human torment” of the other characters thanks to the “malicious or inhuman” fairies’ abduction: Barrie’s own conclusion still offers no mercy for the victims. “[N]othing whatever is done with [their] horrible sufferings.” Is this, though, quite fair to the play as written? The Morlands confess to one another that their hearts were not broken, that is, their lives have not been utterly ruined, that happiness has broken through at times. Simon was able to serve his country well in the war, and though he apparently was a very difficult father to his motherless boy, yet the grown man who comes back from Australia is courageous and compassionate.


One should read Barrie’s play, if possible, in Peter Hollindale’s 1995 edition for Oxford’s World Classics, a volume that also includes Peter Pan and others.


In 2007, Mary Rose was revived at the Vineyard Theater in New York. The reviewer for the Times said that “this elegantly plotted ghost story [is] a more mature and mournful reworking of themes Barrie explored in the tale of the boy who refused to grow up.”




*I suppose It goes back to the myth of Proserpina.

 

[WaylanderToo]

Would mercedes lackey's SERRAted Edge series fit in here?

 

[BAYLOR]

The Forgotten Beasts of Els by Patricia McKillip

 

[nixie]

I've read a few more since this thread was born. Gaiman's Stardust, Lord Dunsany's King of Elfland's Daughter. Hope Mirless Lud in the Mist, Poul Anderson's Broken Sword. All good reads but Lud in the Mist is a beautiful read.

 

[Randy M.]

I have yet to read it, but wouldn't the story collection, Kingdoms of Elfin by Sylvia Townsend Warner qualify?


Randy M.

 

[Woofdog2]

I agree with Anserson's fabulous Broken Sword but I've never heard of The Merman’s Children. What's it about?

Also I'm reading McKillip's Riddlemaster trilogy as part of the Fanatsy Masterwork series and quite enjoying it. It's the first thing I've read by this author although I've known of her by name only, so can you elaborate on Winter Rose???

I am away from my bookshelf now but anderson wrote a number of books which involved faerie to some degree or other. Three Hearts Three Lions explicitly involves Faerie as well, as does A Midsummer Tempest. I am sure there are others besides the 5 mentioned so far but cannot recall titles.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Peadar O'Guilin's The Call - fantastic dark YA about teens being taken to the world of the sidhe. The modern story is in Ireland (so more of a modern rural fantasy ) but the focus is on the fae world.