The Folk of the Air

I loved it. A magical book done pretty much right. Beagle deserves his status as best-fantasy-author-that-you-think-everybody-should-know-about-and-love-but-really-it-seems-nobody-has-ever-heard-of-him-and-how-weird-is-that-?.

I do object to the attempt to materialize and de-mystify the whole thing (one deity says to another “Remember, we aren't real.”). But stories don't matter if they aren't true, if we are always distancing ourselves from them to remind ourselves, “This isn't true, don't forget.” Adam and Eve is meaningful only if it is taken to be true. King Arthur is relevant only if true. Yes, it is quite possible to understand–with the part of my brain that drives a car and goes shopping–that dragons aren't real, and I know that if I went back in a time machine 6000 years I would not see a man named Adam and a woman named Eve anywhere, but if the story isn't real in a meaningful way, it is just meaningless. I feel that way about the deities and especially the deity who is a main character in this book. When Beagle reminded me, via dialogue, that they were not real, it made the whole book harder to enter into.

But other than that, which is a complaint I make against many other authors–especially writers about myth and Bible criticism–I loved this book.