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The Folk of the Air
While attending the revels of the League for Archaic Pleasurs, a group dedicated to the pleasures of the medieval period, Joe Farrell comes face-to-face with Nicholas Bonner, a spirit from the past and an ancient evil
375 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1986
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1333 people want to read
About the author
Peter S. Beagle
222 books3,868 followersPeter Soyer Beagle (born April 20, 1939) is an American fantasist and author of novels, nonfiction, and screenplays. He is also a talented guitarist and folk singer. He wrote his first novel, A Fine and Private Place , when he was only 19 years old. Today he is best known as the author of The Last Unicorn, which routinely polls as one of the top ten fantasy novels of all time, and at least two of his other books (A Fine and Private Place and I See By My Outfit) are considered modern classics.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 110 reviews
July 23, 2011
It's Peter S. Beagle, in true lyrical form, gentle, wry, humorous, melancholic with a little bit of action.
"The sky was the color of mercury, mushy as a bruise."
"As an afterthought, he also screamed "'Kreegaaahh!' at the top of his lungs, for the first time since he was eleven years old, jumping off of his parents' bed, which was the bank of the Limpopo River, onto his cousin Mary Margaret Louise, who was a crocodile."
"His mouth was badly swollen, but his style was already beginning to regenerate itself, spinning pink-and-white self-assurance before Farrell's eyes, as a lizard grows new limbs."
"She turned her back; as she did so, Farrell felt a curious desolation pass over him--a fox-fierce little autumn wind of abandonment and loss that might have blown out of his childhood, when sorrows were all the same size and came and went without ever explaining themselves."
"The sky was the color of mercury, mushy as a bruise."
"As an afterthought, he also screamed "'Kreegaaahh!' at the top of his lungs, for the first time since he was eleven years old, jumping off of his parents' bed, which was the bank of the Limpopo River, onto his cousin Mary Margaret Louise, who was a crocodile."
"His mouth was badly swollen, but his style was already beginning to regenerate itself, spinning pink-and-white self-assurance before Farrell's eyes, as a lizard grows new limbs."
"She turned her back; as she did so, Farrell felt a curious desolation pass over him--a fox-fierce little autumn wind of abandonment and loss that might have blown out of his childhood, when sorrows were all the same size and came and went without ever explaining themselves."
June 19, 2016
[9/10]
They were playing with time and magic, but time is tricky and magic is dangerous!
This is an excellent summary of the novel Peter S Beagle took so many years to write. I read somewhere that "The Folk of the Air" comes after "The Last Unicorn" in his catalogue, so in my mind the action was set somewhere at the tail end of the sixties. Imagine my surprise when I checked the actual publishing date and noticed the almost twenty year gap! This low output (barring a few short stories and non-fiction) might explain in part why Mr. Beagle is so terribly underrated and why his urban fantasy set on a California campus among Medieval re-enactment societies is not as well known as the works of Neil Gaiman or Charles de Lint, who will both use the same literary devices of introducing creatures from a mythical past into an ordinary modern setting. And frankly (in my fanboy opinion), Peter S Beagle is just as good, if not better, than the two authors I mentioned above.
Avicenna, California. Museum of my twisted youth, vault of my dearest and most disgusting memories.
The story opens with the entrance of a minstrel, a troubadour returning home after long years of wandering the far corners of the earth, playing old tunes on his lute and driving a battered Volkswagen bus (what else?) named Madame Schumann-Heink. Joe Farell is a drifter coming back to his alma mater in Avicenna (a fictional town in the Bay of California), to stay with his old school friend Ben and with his older (and odd) lover Sia. An early incident with a young hitchhiker underlines Farrell's laidback atitude to life, his sense of humour and serves as an early warning to the reader of a dark and twisted road ahead.
The story takes its time about building up to this ominous 'phantom menace' and in getting us acquainted with the characters. First we get to wonder about the mysterious nature of Sia and of her off kilter house. Sia has a heavy psychic presence, offers counselling in her rooms to disturbed individuals and has as a pet a huge Irish wolfhound named Briseis. Ben is a teacher of Medieval studies at the Avicenna university. Secondly, Joe Farrel gets reunited with his old flame, a biker girl named Julie Tanikawa, in a lovely romantic interlude between two free spirits who cannot live either together or apart. Julie is also an artist and a globe trotter, and kids Joe about his obsessions with music and with the past. Farrell argues instead that it's better to get to the core of your interest by careful study, rather than scatter your attention on a thousand trivial pursuits:
Wherever I go, I always want to spend a lifetime there. Anywhere - Tashkent, Calabria, East Cicero. I always want to be born there, and grow up and know everything about the place and be horribly ignorant and die. I don't approve of flying visits. It's the same thing with the music, I guess. Smells, noises.
This quote serves as an excuse for Julie to introduce Joe Farrell to the League of Archaic Pleasure , a society for like-minded people who meet and pretend they are living in Medieval times. The story gets a lot moer interesting from this point, as Joe and Julie find out that the game of dressing up in armour or brocade and talking in Chaucer pidgin becomes reality for many of the participants. Ben is seen in the guise of a ninth century Viking named Egil Eyvindsson, so caught up in the role that he doesn't seem capable of separating the two realities. A fifteen year old girl nicknamed Aiffe pretends to be a dangerous witch and sumons a peculiar man named Nicholas Bonner who remembers being burned at the stake in Germany in the fifeen century. Many other kings and knights and princesses dance around in costume in this pretend Kingdom of Huy Braseal, but how would Farrell be able to tell the difference between the reality and the fiction?
Farrell could not find any faces in that first wonder of brightness and velvet, cloaks and gold and brocade - only the beautiful clothes glittering in a great circle, moving as though they were inhabited, not by human heaviness, but by marshlights and the wind. 'The folk of the air', he thought. 'These are surely the folk of the air.'
The passage above will explain the title of the novel, together with a later declaration from one of the participants, on the eve of the League's popular annual tournament:
We're not a softball game. We're an air, an atmosphere. You don't sell tickets to an atmosphere.
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be very careful about the games we play (I am paraphrasing Kurt Vonnegut in "Mother Night", but the aphorism seems appropriate in this setting). Names have power and the gods and demons of the distant past are only sleeping, waiting for a new acolyte to summon them. Joe must find a League name for himself, and he comes up with "The Knight of Ghosts and Shadows".
Of course it's a game. Middle-class white people running around in long underwear, assistant professors hitting each other with sticks, what else could it be?
I liked this middle portion of the book, again with a fair warning that the pace is a little slow, as the author takes his time to introduce the different Medieval impersonators. In particular, I liked the phlegmatic atitude of Joe Farrell, who decides to play along with the League and join its ranks as a minstrel at the court of King Bohemond, holding his judgement until more information comes his way ( I don't have any particular trouble with the supernatural. It bewilders me about as much as the natural, I can't always tell them apart. ). I also liked the slow but constant build-up of tension about the dangers of playing with things too little understood, and I liked the flashes of humour when the modern slang intrudes on the High Court speech required of the League members:
King Bohemond said, "What the f_ck?" The men standing with him all cleared their throats, and the king mumbled wearily, "Sorry. What bodeth this outlandish manner of exhortation?"
Most of all, I liked the author's mastery of language and the subtle way of introducing both a little political commentary and a personal, emotional note into the adventure. From the mouth of the same King Bohemond, addressing his new recruit:
Th'art a musicker, sayest? Play an air for us, then, that we may know thee. For the reeds and the strings say who we are, beyond all misconceiving, and where each of us a man of music, there would be no more falsehood nor treachery in the world, surely.
Step by step the case for living in the past is argued by several of the members of the League of Archaic Pleasures, asking the reader where he draws the line between escapism and a true lifestyle, a sense of belonging. Here are a few of these arguments:
Grading papers is boring. Wars are fun. Get in, we've got two other knights to pick up.
/ / /
It's what happens in groups. People who get together because of a hobby or an obsession start to look a certain way. Boat people, backpackers, science fiction types, comic book collectors. Even short-wave radio freaks sort of have a look.
(an interesting follow up question would be : what does my look says about my hobbies? I guess 'computer gamer' and 'couch potato'. I hope I strike out on 'creepy online stalker')
/ / /
Because, of course, nobody ever volunteers to be a peasant.
/ / /
Honey, you have no idea just how much weird shit I will endure for the sake of having someplace to dress up. I'm sorry, I got to be somebody besides that damn bus driver now and again.
/ / /
Little bit addictive, the 'griot' business. Down at the post office, they don't have much room for a person wants to be an entire group memory all by himself.
The last quote, courtesy of the shaman/chronicler Hamid ibn Shanfara, is my favorite in explaining not only Medieval re-enacting but also speculative fiction in general as a probe into the inner dreams and aspirations of a generation. Avicenna and its Medieval leagues have some flower-power connotations in refusing a purely materialistc world and seeking wisdom in the alternative lifestyles, but the issues raised are still relevant, I think.
>><<>><<>><<
The last part of the novel is the reward of all that slow build-up. It is simply spectacular, an edge-of-the-seat rush to stop an evil entity from unleashing havoc on the present world. From an exorcism involving a Japanese deity to mock-up war on a deserted island, then to the annual tournament that establishes the next king in single combat, we are thrown into the middle of a magical hurricane that transcends space and time. Remember that opening quote from the blurb? Game's on, for Farrell and his friends! Spirits hungry to become flesh battle gods older than civilization in a universe where the laws of physics have been abandoned and the only limit is the power of imagination.
Julie recalls her childhood visits to her traditional grandmother:
I remember she used to drive my parents crazy, because she'd tell me really scary stories about the different kinds of ghosts - 'shirei' and 'muen-botoke' and the hungry ghosts, the 'gaki'. And 'ikiryo', they're the worst, they're the spirits of the living, and you can send them out to kill people if you're wicked enough. I loved the 'ikiryo' stories. They gave me such great nightmares.
Nightmare is a good word for the final experience, but also good are majestic and incredibly poignant about what we are and what we can do with our lives. I saved the best for last, the savagery inherent to this world of ours and the hope that keeps us going forward. These last quotesa are what makes the difference between a four and a five rating for me.
I am a black stone, the size of a kitchen stove. They wash me in the stream every summer and sing over me. I am skulls and cocks, spring rain and the blood of the bull. Virgins lie with strangers in my name, and young priests throw pieces of themselves at my stone feet. I am white corn, and the wind in the corn, and the earth whereof the corn stands up, and the blind worms rolled in an oozy ball of love at the corn's roots. I am rut and flood and honeybees. Since you ask.
I like it here. Of all the worlds, this one was made for me, with its silliness and its cruelty, and its fine trees. Nothing ever changes. For every understanding, a new terror - for each foolishness at last pulled down, three little new insanities sprouting. Such mess, such beauty, such hopelessness. I talk to my clients, but I can never know how they can get up in the morning, how any of you can ever get out of bed. One day, nobody will bother. [...] And still you desire one another. And still you invent and reinvent yourselves, you manufacutre entire universes, just as real and fatal as this one, all for an excuse to stumble against one another for a moment. I know gods who have come into existence only because two of you wanted there to be a reason for what they were about to do that afternoon. Listen, I tell you that on the stars they can smell your desire - there are ears of a shape you have no word for listening to your dreams and lies, tears and gruntings. There is nothing like you anywhere among all the stones in the sky, do you realize that? You are the wonder of the cosmos, possibly for embarassing reasons, but anyway a wonder. You are the home of hunger and boredom, and I roll in you like a dog.
>><<>><<>><<
This hell of a place, I will miss it so much. This fat body, walking mud puddle, deceived by everything, this impossible, ruinous accident of a world, these people who would truly rather hurt one another than eat - oh, there is nothing, nothing, nothing I would not do to stay here ten minutes longer. Oh, I will leave clawmarks, I will drag mountains and forests away under my fingernails when I am dragged off.
"The Folks of The Air" is a complex story , with rich picking for the patient reader who want to look beyond its immediate horror thriller structure. It does have some pacing issues and some sketchy characterization (mostly this means I wanted to spend more time in the company of some of the characters). But the ending redeemed all the minor grumbling I went through in the previous chapters. I hear a new edition is in the works from the author, and I would really, really love to read a sequel . Until then, I believe Julie's Grandmother offers the best coda to the adventure:
... she knew that human beings everywhere need mercy most of all.
>><<>><<>><<
bonus - soundtrack listing (some mentioned in the novel, some my own contribution)
- The Beatles - "Day Tripper" , "Helter Skelter". "Eleanor Rigby"
- Simon & Garfunkel - "Scarborough Fair"
- Jethro Tull - "Living in the Past" , "The Minstrel in the Gallery" , "Too Old To Rock'n Roll, Too Young To Die" , "Bouree"
- Bobbie Gentry - "Ode To Billy Joe"
- Blackmore's Night - any
- Loreena McKennitt - any
They were playing with time and magic, but time is tricky and magic is dangerous!
This is an excellent summary of the novel Peter S Beagle took so many years to write. I read somewhere that "The Folk of the Air" comes after "The Last Unicorn" in his catalogue, so in my mind the action was set somewhere at the tail end of the sixties. Imagine my surprise when I checked the actual publishing date and noticed the almost twenty year gap! This low output (barring a few short stories and non-fiction) might explain in part why Mr. Beagle is so terribly underrated and why his urban fantasy set on a California campus among Medieval re-enactment societies is not as well known as the works of Neil Gaiman or Charles de Lint, who will both use the same literary devices of introducing creatures from a mythical past into an ordinary modern setting. And frankly (in my fanboy opinion), Peter S Beagle is just as good, if not better, than the two authors I mentioned above.
Avicenna, California. Museum of my twisted youth, vault of my dearest and most disgusting memories.
The story opens with the entrance of a minstrel, a troubadour returning home after long years of wandering the far corners of the earth, playing old tunes on his lute and driving a battered Volkswagen bus (what else?) named Madame Schumann-Heink. Joe Farell is a drifter coming back to his alma mater in Avicenna (a fictional town in the Bay of California), to stay with his old school friend Ben and with his older (and odd) lover Sia. An early incident with a young hitchhiker underlines Farrell's laidback atitude to life, his sense of humour and serves as an early warning to the reader of a dark and twisted road ahead.
The story takes its time about building up to this ominous 'phantom menace' and in getting us acquainted with the characters. First we get to wonder about the mysterious nature of Sia and of her off kilter house. Sia has a heavy psychic presence, offers counselling in her rooms to disturbed individuals and has as a pet a huge Irish wolfhound named Briseis. Ben is a teacher of Medieval studies at the Avicenna university. Secondly, Joe Farrel gets reunited with his old flame, a biker girl named Julie Tanikawa, in a lovely romantic interlude between two free spirits who cannot live either together or apart. Julie is also an artist and a globe trotter, and kids Joe about his obsessions with music and with the past. Farrell argues instead that it's better to get to the core of your interest by careful study, rather than scatter your attention on a thousand trivial pursuits:
Wherever I go, I always want to spend a lifetime there. Anywhere - Tashkent, Calabria, East Cicero. I always want to be born there, and grow up and know everything about the place and be horribly ignorant and die. I don't approve of flying visits. It's the same thing with the music, I guess. Smells, noises.
This quote serves as an excuse for Julie to introduce Joe Farrell to the League of Archaic Pleasure , a society for like-minded people who meet and pretend they are living in Medieval times. The story gets a lot moer interesting from this point, as Joe and Julie find out that the game of dressing up in armour or brocade and talking in Chaucer pidgin becomes reality for many of the participants. Ben is seen in the guise of a ninth century Viking named Egil Eyvindsson, so caught up in the role that he doesn't seem capable of separating the two realities. A fifteen year old girl nicknamed Aiffe pretends to be a dangerous witch and sumons a peculiar man named Nicholas Bonner who remembers being burned at the stake in Germany in the fifeen century. Many other kings and knights and princesses dance around in costume in this pretend Kingdom of Huy Braseal, but how would Farrell be able to tell the difference between the reality and the fiction?
Farrell could not find any faces in that first wonder of brightness and velvet, cloaks and gold and brocade - only the beautiful clothes glittering in a great circle, moving as though they were inhabited, not by human heaviness, but by marshlights and the wind. 'The folk of the air', he thought. 'These are surely the folk of the air.'
The passage above will explain the title of the novel, together with a later declaration from one of the participants, on the eve of the League's popular annual tournament:
We're not a softball game. We're an air, an atmosphere. You don't sell tickets to an atmosphere.
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be very careful about the games we play (I am paraphrasing Kurt Vonnegut in "Mother Night", but the aphorism seems appropriate in this setting). Names have power and the gods and demons of the distant past are only sleeping, waiting for a new acolyte to summon them. Joe must find a League name for himself, and he comes up with "The Knight of Ghosts and Shadows".
Of course it's a game. Middle-class white people running around in long underwear, assistant professors hitting each other with sticks, what else could it be?
I liked this middle portion of the book, again with a fair warning that the pace is a little slow, as the author takes his time to introduce the different Medieval impersonators. In particular, I liked the phlegmatic atitude of Joe Farrell, who decides to play along with the League and join its ranks as a minstrel at the court of King Bohemond, holding his judgement until more information comes his way ( I don't have any particular trouble with the supernatural. It bewilders me about as much as the natural, I can't always tell them apart. ). I also liked the slow but constant build-up of tension about the dangers of playing with things too little understood, and I liked the flashes of humour when the modern slang intrudes on the High Court speech required of the League members:
King Bohemond said, "What the f_ck?" The men standing with him all cleared their throats, and the king mumbled wearily, "Sorry. What bodeth this outlandish manner of exhortation?"
Most of all, I liked the author's mastery of language and the subtle way of introducing both a little political commentary and a personal, emotional note into the adventure. From the mouth of the same King Bohemond, addressing his new recruit:
Th'art a musicker, sayest? Play an air for us, then, that we may know thee. For the reeds and the strings say who we are, beyond all misconceiving, and where each of us a man of music, there would be no more falsehood nor treachery in the world, surely.
Step by step the case for living in the past is argued by several of the members of the League of Archaic Pleasures, asking the reader where he draws the line between escapism and a true lifestyle, a sense of belonging. Here are a few of these arguments:
Grading papers is boring. Wars are fun. Get in, we've got two other knights to pick up.
/ / /
It's what happens in groups. People who get together because of a hobby or an obsession start to look a certain way. Boat people, backpackers, science fiction types, comic book collectors. Even short-wave radio freaks sort of have a look.
(an interesting follow up question would be : what does my look says about my hobbies? I guess 'computer gamer' and 'couch potato'. I hope I strike out on 'creepy online stalker')
/ / /
Because, of course, nobody ever volunteers to be a peasant.
/ / /
Honey, you have no idea just how much weird shit I will endure for the sake of having someplace to dress up. I'm sorry, I got to be somebody besides that damn bus driver now and again.
/ / /
Little bit addictive, the 'griot' business. Down at the post office, they don't have much room for a person wants to be an entire group memory all by himself.
The last quote, courtesy of the shaman/chronicler Hamid ibn Shanfara, is my favorite in explaining not only Medieval re-enacting but also speculative fiction in general as a probe into the inner dreams and aspirations of a generation. Avicenna and its Medieval leagues have some flower-power connotations in refusing a purely materialistc world and seeking wisdom in the alternative lifestyles, but the issues raised are still relevant, I think.
>><<>><<>><<
The last part of the novel is the reward of all that slow build-up. It is simply spectacular, an edge-of-the-seat rush to stop an evil entity from unleashing havoc on the present world. From an exorcism involving a Japanese deity to mock-up war on a deserted island, then to the annual tournament that establishes the next king in single combat, we are thrown into the middle of a magical hurricane that transcends space and time. Remember that opening quote from the blurb? Game's on, for Farrell and his friends! Spirits hungry to become flesh battle gods older than civilization in a universe where the laws of physics have been abandoned and the only limit is the power of imagination.
Julie recalls her childhood visits to her traditional grandmother:
I remember she used to drive my parents crazy, because she'd tell me really scary stories about the different kinds of ghosts - 'shirei' and 'muen-botoke' and the hungry ghosts, the 'gaki'. And 'ikiryo', they're the worst, they're the spirits of the living, and you can send them out to kill people if you're wicked enough. I loved the 'ikiryo' stories. They gave me such great nightmares.
Nightmare is a good word for the final experience, but also good are majestic and incredibly poignant about what we are and what we can do with our lives. I saved the best for last, the savagery inherent to this world of ours and the hope that keeps us going forward. These last quotesa are what makes the difference between a four and a five rating for me.
I am a black stone, the size of a kitchen stove. They wash me in the stream every summer and sing over me. I am skulls and cocks, spring rain and the blood of the bull. Virgins lie with strangers in my name, and young priests throw pieces of themselves at my stone feet. I am white corn, and the wind in the corn, and the earth whereof the corn stands up, and the blind worms rolled in an oozy ball of love at the corn's roots. I am rut and flood and honeybees. Since you ask.
I like it here. Of all the worlds, this one was made for me, with its silliness and its cruelty, and its fine trees. Nothing ever changes. For every understanding, a new terror - for each foolishness at last pulled down, three little new insanities sprouting. Such mess, such beauty, such hopelessness. I talk to my clients, but I can never know how they can get up in the morning, how any of you can ever get out of bed. One day, nobody will bother. [...] And still you desire one another. And still you invent and reinvent yourselves, you manufacutre entire universes, just as real and fatal as this one, all for an excuse to stumble against one another for a moment. I know gods who have come into existence only because two of you wanted there to be a reason for what they were about to do that afternoon. Listen, I tell you that on the stars they can smell your desire - there are ears of a shape you have no word for listening to your dreams and lies, tears and gruntings. There is nothing like you anywhere among all the stones in the sky, do you realize that? You are the wonder of the cosmos, possibly for embarassing reasons, but anyway a wonder. You are the home of hunger and boredom, and I roll in you like a dog.
>><<>><<>><<
This hell of a place, I will miss it so much. This fat body, walking mud puddle, deceived by everything, this impossible, ruinous accident of a world, these people who would truly rather hurt one another than eat - oh, there is nothing, nothing, nothing I would not do to stay here ten minutes longer. Oh, I will leave clawmarks, I will drag mountains and forests away under my fingernails when I am dragged off.
"The Folks of The Air" is a complex story , with rich picking for the patient reader who want to look beyond its immediate horror thriller structure. It does have some pacing issues and some sketchy characterization (mostly this means I wanted to spend more time in the company of some of the characters). But the ending redeemed all the minor grumbling I went through in the previous chapters. I hear a new edition is in the works from the author, and I would really, really love to read a sequel . Until then, I believe Julie's Grandmother offers the best coda to the adventure:
... she knew that human beings everywhere need mercy most of all.
>><<>><<>><<
bonus - soundtrack listing (some mentioned in the novel, some my own contribution)
- The Beatles - "Day Tripper" , "Helter Skelter". "Eleanor Rigby"
- Simon & Garfunkel - "Scarborough Fair"
- Jethro Tull - "Living in the Past" , "The Minstrel in the Gallery" , "Too Old To Rock'n Roll, Too Young To Die" , "Bouree"
- Bobbie Gentry - "Ode To Billy Joe"
- Blackmore's Night - any
- Loreena McKennitt - any
September 28, 2015
Just finished my first re-read of this in years, and I think I will need several future re-reads to even hope to understand this story on more than a few levels. Like anything by Beagle, The Folk of the Air seems to shift and change depending on one's own psychological state at the time of reading, some lines I realised I had memorised (despite last reading this 10 years ago) and others struck me as fresh and new, as if I had never seen them before.
This is some of Beagle's best technical writing; at times it is almost too vivid. The first chapter is so crowded with perfect, sensory metaphors that you have to pause for breath between paragraphs. The style relaxes as you continue and, in the scenes featuring the League, blossoms into Beagle at his poetic best. When he writes about music, you hear it, and feel the vibrations in the rhythm of the words. The magic scenes are hallucinogenic, but never confusing, and their power is in touching on mythic archetypes but never naming them.
As a History student (specialising in Medieval studies) I still did not get all of the references and allusions woven into this love song to the middle ages, I had to look some up (and am richer for it.) But you don't need to know what Dowland sounds like on the lute, or be familiar with Mansa Musa to enjoy the experience. This is a book for anyone who feels out of place and out of time in their own reality, not because it offers escape, but instead sympathy, and a warning. Ben and Egil's story, in particular, is achingly familiar. This is what it means to love someone who has been dead 900 years.
This book clarified for me, why I so love Medieval literature: I am in love, not with the middle ages, but with their dreams of themselves. The ghosts and shadows that were ghosts and shadows already one thousand years ago.
This is some of Beagle's best technical writing; at times it is almost too vivid. The first chapter is so crowded with perfect, sensory metaphors that you have to pause for breath between paragraphs. The style relaxes as you continue and, in the scenes featuring the League, blossoms into Beagle at his poetic best. When he writes about music, you hear it, and feel the vibrations in the rhythm of the words. The magic scenes are hallucinogenic, but never confusing, and their power is in touching on mythic archetypes but never naming them.
As a History student (specialising in Medieval studies) I still did not get all of the references and allusions woven into this love song to the middle ages, I had to look some up (and am richer for it.) But you don't need to know what Dowland sounds like on the lute, or be familiar with Mansa Musa to enjoy the experience. This is a book for anyone who feels out of place and out of time in their own reality, not because it offers escape, but instead sympathy, and a warning. Ben and Egil's story, in particular, is achingly familiar. This is what it means to love someone who has been dead 900 years.
This book clarified for me, why I so love Medieval literature: I am in love, not with the middle ages, but with their dreams of themselves. The ghosts and shadows that were ghosts and shadows already one thousand years ago.
May 20, 2019
This book is decades old, out of print, and has been reviewed and picked apart many times over, so I'll try to keep my review short.
This is my second Peter Beagle book, and once again I'm struck by his language. This book in particular is 90% mood and atmosphere, 10% story. There is a plot, and there are characters (well drawn ones at that), but that all comes secondary to evoking a strong sense of place and mood. In fact, I'd say this book is just one big Mood. And that's kind of wonderful. Fantasy from this era has such a distinct feel - it drew me back in time to my youth, reading books much like this one and being transported.
It's also worth remarking upon how gentle this book is. There's a core of compassion that I haven't seen often in books of any genre. It hits upon bittersweetness, youth, optimism, and naivety. It paints people lovingly, even when they aren't perhaps the most lovable. It has also aged, in my opinion, very well in the treatment of women. The ladies in this book have agency and strength, and are probably the most compelling and well-rounded characters in the story.
I don't particularly have any criticisms of this book - the only reason my rating isn't higher is because I prefer a swifter story. This book is like laying in a lazy river, slowly being pulled downstream, and watching the sun wink through the tree branches overhead. It's a lovely journey. I just happen to like a few more rapids in my rivers.
This is my second Peter Beagle book, and once again I'm struck by his language. This book in particular is 90% mood and atmosphere, 10% story. There is a plot, and there are characters (well drawn ones at that), but that all comes secondary to evoking a strong sense of place and mood. In fact, I'd say this book is just one big Mood. And that's kind of wonderful. Fantasy from this era has such a distinct feel - it drew me back in time to my youth, reading books much like this one and being transported.
It's also worth remarking upon how gentle this book is. There's a core of compassion that I haven't seen often in books of any genre. It hits upon bittersweetness, youth, optimism, and naivety. It paints people lovingly, even when they aren't perhaps the most lovable. It has also aged, in my opinion, very well in the treatment of women. The ladies in this book have agency and strength, and are probably the most compelling and well-rounded characters in the story.
I don't particularly have any criticisms of this book - the only reason my rating isn't higher is because I prefer a swifter story. This book is like laying in a lazy river, slowly being pulled downstream, and watching the sun wink through the tree branches overhead. It's a lovely journey. I just happen to like a few more rapids in my rivers.
August 25, 2025
Read The Folk of the Air and you will discover a lost gem from fantasy master Peter S. Beagle. Published in 1986 to a cool reception, the book is long out of print. There are no electronic reading options — neither ebook nor audiobook — you must find a physical copy. But if you enjoy a mature, character rich, urban fantasy with wonderful writing and unique atmosphere, then it’s just the thing.
The setting is Berkeley, California (called Avicenna in the book) in the early 1980s. The already quirky atmosphere provided by this eccentric, Bay Area town is amplified by the presence of a medieval history recreation group, the League for Archaic Pleasures (a transparent gloss for the actual Society for Creative Anachronism, founded in Berkeley in 1966). The book’s action weaves in and around this group, allowing their medievalist costumes and activities to conveniently mask some of the supernatural shenanigans that occur.
The Folk of the Air is a slow burn of a book. Beagle concentrated his considerable writing skills in establishing his primary characters — drifter and dedicated lute meistro Joe Farrell, returning to the university town of his youth, and the enigmatic and powerfully magnetic Sia, the much older women involved with Farrell’s best friend Ben — as well as building up the colorful background of the town, the medievalist league, and the many eccentric side characters in both that make the book pop. It’s not that the book lacks action or plot, but rather that Beagle was more interested in exploring his characters, their relationships, backstories, and intense interactions. If you lack patients for that, this may not be the book for you.
Several last thoughts: though this novel is clearly urban fantasy, at times the character’s attitudes towards fantastic occurrences feels closer to magical realism, as when Farrell expresses,
”I don’t have any particular trouble with the supernatural. It bewilders me about as much as the natural. I can’t always tell them apart.”
As with much of Beagle’s oeuvre, the tone of The Folk of the Air leans heavily into the melancholic and bittersweet. All the characters are touched by some level of tragedy, and world-weariness, loneliness, and loss are endemic.
”Farrell felt a curious desolation pass over him — a fox-fierce little autumn wind of abandonment and loss that might have blown out of his childhood, when sorrows were all the same size and came and went without ever explaining themselves.”
Beagle used a pimply adolescent, Aiffe, as the book’s primary villain. A petulant brat raised in the League of Archaic Pleasures, she plays the part of a witch in the League, but developed real and terrifying powers. Making this work as effectively as he does is an impressive feat of writing in itself.
And finally, any reader who has had even a casual connection to the Society for Creative Anachronism will immediately recognize the eccentric pomp and pomposity of the League for Archaic Pleasures, and will grin and grimace in all the right places.
The setting is Berkeley, California (called Avicenna in the book) in the early 1980s. The already quirky atmosphere provided by this eccentric, Bay Area town is amplified by the presence of a medieval history recreation group, the League for Archaic Pleasures (a transparent gloss for the actual Society for Creative Anachronism, founded in Berkeley in 1966). The book’s action weaves in and around this group, allowing their medievalist costumes and activities to conveniently mask some of the supernatural shenanigans that occur.
The Folk of the Air is a slow burn of a book. Beagle concentrated his considerable writing skills in establishing his primary characters — drifter and dedicated lute meistro Joe Farrell, returning to the university town of his youth, and the enigmatic and powerfully magnetic Sia, the much older women involved with Farrell’s best friend Ben — as well as building up the colorful background of the town, the medievalist league, and the many eccentric side characters in both that make the book pop. It’s not that the book lacks action or plot, but rather that Beagle was more interested in exploring his characters, their relationships, backstories, and intense interactions. If you lack patients for that, this may not be the book for you.
Several last thoughts: though this novel is clearly urban fantasy, at times the character’s attitudes towards fantastic occurrences feels closer to magical realism, as when Farrell expresses,
”I don’t have any particular trouble with the supernatural. It bewilders me about as much as the natural. I can’t always tell them apart.”
As with much of Beagle’s oeuvre, the tone of The Folk of the Air leans heavily into the melancholic and bittersweet. All the characters are touched by some level of tragedy, and world-weariness, loneliness, and loss are endemic.
”Farrell felt a curious desolation pass over him — a fox-fierce little autumn wind of abandonment and loss that might have blown out of his childhood, when sorrows were all the same size and came and went without ever explaining themselves.”
Beagle used a pimply adolescent, Aiffe, as the book’s primary villain. A petulant brat raised in the League of Archaic Pleasures, she plays the part of a witch in the League, but developed real and terrifying powers. Making this work as effectively as he does is an impressive feat of writing in itself.
And finally, any reader who has had even a casual connection to the Society for Creative Anachronism will immediately recognize the eccentric pomp and pomposity of the League for Archaic Pleasures, and will grin and grimace in all the right places.
December 2, 2021
How-how-how is it possible that Peter Beagle translated by Sergei Ilyin has not yet been published in Russia? And yet, since the two thousandth year, when I traveled all the bookstores of my city in search of any Beagle book, without finding it, nothing has changed. Russian book publishers experienced ups and downs, continuing to produce mountains of books. The babies of that time managed to grow up, now they work miracles with the help of smartphones, but they prefer to read on paper. Internet commerce has flourished with delivery even to the door. And there is still no Beagle to be found.
Sergey Ilyin Diamond Foundation said about the translation for a reason, who has read at least one book translated by him, will not want an alternative, no matter how good it is. It's just that in every profession there are talented and conscientious people, there are even fashionable and well-known, and there are geniuses, Ilyin is one of them. I understand that he did Beagle's books during the wild capitalism of the nineties, when the sanctity of copyright was an abstract concept in Russia, and today difficulties may arise with the publication of this variant, but the novel is unthinkably good.
What novel? "Archaic Entertainment" (The Folks of the Air) It's hard to resist starting to exalt hosanna using superlatives, but I'll try. So, America of the mid-eighties, a university town with a talking name Avicenna in California. A former student Joe Farrell comes here to the bosom of his alma mater at the invitation of a friend who now teaches at the local college. He is not in the scientific part, he is such a tramp and a jack of all trades, although for the most part he is a cook for the sake of earning money, and for the soul he plays the lute.
Игры джентльменов
- Я - черный камень размером с кухонную плиту. Каждое лето меня омывают в потоке и поют надо мной. Я - колея и вода в колее, и медоносные пчелы. Раз уж тебе так приспичило знать.
Как-как-как это возможно, чтобы Питер Бигл в переводе Сергея Ильина до сих пор не был издан в России? И однако, с двухтысячного года, когда объездила все книжные своего города в поисках любой книги Бигла, так и не найдя - ничего не изменилось. Российские книгоиздатели переживали взлеты и падения, продолжая выпускать горы книг. Успели повзрослеть тогдашние младенцы, творят теперь чудеса при помощи смартфонов, но читать предпочитают на бумаге. Расцвела интернет-торговля с доставкой хоть до двери. А Бигла по-прежнему не сыскать.
О переводе не случайно сказала, Сергей Ильин алмазный фонд, кто прочел хотя бы одну, переведенную им, книгу, не захочет альтернативы, сколь бы ни была хороша. Просто в каждой профессии есть люди талантливые и добросовестные, есть даже модные и распиаренные, а есть гении, Ильин из них. Понимаю, что бигловы книги он делал во времена дикого капитализма девяностых, когда святость авторского права была у нас понятием абстрактным, и сегодня с публикацией этого варианта могут возникнуть сложности, но роман немыслимо хорош.
Что за роман? "Архаические развлечения" (The Folks of the Air) Трудно удержаться от того, чтобы начать возносить осанну с использованием превосходных степеней, но я попытаюсь. Итак, Америка середины восьмидесятых, университетский городок с говорящим названием Авиценна в Калифорнии. Сюда, в лоно альма матер по приглашению друга, ныне преподающего в здешнем колледже, приезжает бывший студент Джо Фаррелл. Он не по научной части, такой бродяга и на все руки мастер, хотя большей частью повар ради заработка, а для души играет на лютне.
Кто читал рассказ "Лила-оборотень" вспомнит этого парня. Он знает, что Бен живет с женщиной старше себя, но оказывается не готов к тому, что Зия, как бы покорректнее, едва ли не старуха. Грузная, привлекательности ни на грош, обхождением не очаровывает и вообще что-он-в-ней-нашел-? Однако не наше дело обсуждать и осуждать выбор друзей, тем более тех друзей, которые предоставляют кров. Подразумевается, что это ненадолго, но само собой выходит, что Фаррелл становится третьим обитателем дома Зии. Четвертым, если считать престарелую овчарку Брисеиду.
Постоялец он необременительный: тотчас устроился в кафе, покупает продукты и готовит разные вкусности, собаку выгуливает, музицирует по вечерам, услаждая слух хозяев - так все и идет. Постепенно выбор друга становится Фарреллу более понятен, в этой женщине, впрямь, что-то необыкновенное, сила, харизма, неожиданная царственность. А вскоре герой оказывается допущен в круг посвященных, чей досуг отдан ролевым играм с реконструкцией рыцарских и куртуазных обычаев средневековья, которыми увлекаются в Авиценне представители интеллектуальной элиты, ну знаете, одежды, манеры, оружие - вот это все.
И буквально на первой такого рода вечеринке становится случайным свидетелем ритуала, посредством которого девочка-подросток Эйффи вызывает из потустороннего мира некое существо, принявшее облик красивого юноши. То есть, кто другой попытался бы подобрать явлению Никласа Боннера рациональное объяснение. но Фарреллу приходилось уже сталкиваться со сверхъестественным, некоторые люди более открыты таким вещам, и он всерьез напуган. Ну, потому что забавляться призывом демонов примерно так же безопасно, как играть со спичками во время сильной засухи.
В чем леди и джентльмены. предающиеся архаическим развлечениям, скоро убедятся. Но пока привычка к рациональному мышлению заставляет отмахиваться от предупреждений и закрывать глаза на очевидное. К несчастью для участников. К счастью для читателей. Потому что это потрясающе интересная история. Остроумная, мудрая, волшебная, поэтичная, простая и сложная, с горечью хинина во вкусе и медовой сладостью в послевкусии. И таки да. Питер Бигл гений, Сергей Ильин тоже был гением.
Ну сделайте же это, господа издатели, есть еще дивная Песнь Трактирщика (The Innkeeper's song), чтоб умный добрый наш народ знал Питера Бигла не только по "Последнему Единорогу". Внакладе не останетесь.
Sergey Ilyin Diamond Foundation said about the translation for a reason, who has read at least one book translated by him, will not want an alternative, no matter how good it is. It's just that in every profession there are talented and conscientious people, there are even fashionable and well-known, and there are geniuses, Ilyin is one of them. I understand that he did Beagle's books during the wild capitalism of the nineties, when the sanctity of copyright was an abstract concept in Russia, and today difficulties may arise with the publication of this variant, but the novel is unthinkably good.
What novel? "Archaic Entertainment" (The Folks of the Air) It's hard to resist starting to exalt hosanna using superlatives, but I'll try. So, America of the mid-eighties, a university town with a talking name Avicenna in California. A former student Joe Farrell comes here to the bosom of his alma mater at the invitation of a friend who now teaches at the local college. He is not in the scientific part, he is such a tramp and a jack of all trades, although for the most part he is a cook for the sake of earning money, and for the soul he plays the lute.
Игры джентльменов
- Я - черный камень размером с кухонную плиту. Каждое лето меня омывают в потоке и поют надо мной. Я - колея и вода в колее, и медоносные пчелы. Раз уж тебе так приспичило знать.
Как-как-как это возможно, чтобы Питер Бигл в переводе Сергея Ильина до сих пор не был издан в России? И однако, с двухтысячного года, когда объездила все книжные своего города в поисках любой книги Бигла, так и не найдя - ничего не изменилось. Российские книгоиздатели переживали взлеты и падения, продолжая выпускать горы книг. Успели повзрослеть тогдашние младенцы, творят теперь чудеса при помощи смартфонов, но читать предпочитают на бумаге. Расцвела интернет-торговля с доставкой хоть до двери. А Бигла по-прежнему не сыскать.
О переводе не случайно сказала, Сергей Ильин алмазный фонд, кто прочел хотя бы одну, переведенную им, книгу, не захочет альтернативы, сколь бы ни была хороша. Просто в каждой профессии есть люди талантливые и добросовестные, есть даже модные и распиаренные, а есть гении, Ильин из них. Понимаю, что бигловы книги он делал во времена дикого капитализма девяностых, когда святость авторского права была у нас понятием абстрактным, и сегодня с публикацией этого варианта могут возникнуть сложности, но роман немыслимо хорош.
Что за роман? "Архаические развлечения" (The Folks of the Air) Трудно удержаться от того, чтобы начать возносить осанну с использованием превосходных степеней, но я попытаюсь. Итак, Америка середины восьмидесятых, университетский городок с говорящим названием Авиценна в Калифорнии. Сюда, в лоно альма матер по приглашению друга, ныне преподающего в здешнем колледже, приезжает бывший студент Джо Фаррелл. Он не по научной части, такой бродяга и на все руки мастер, хотя большей частью повар ради заработка, а для души играет на лютне.
Кто читал рассказ "Лила-оборотень" вспомнит этого парня. Он знает, что Бен живет с женщиной старше себя, но оказывается не готов к тому, что Зия, как бы покорректнее, едва ли не старуха. Грузная, привлекательности ни на грош, обхождением не очаровывает и вообще что-он-в-ней-нашел-? Однако не наше дело обсуждать и осуждать выбор друзей, тем более тех друзей, которые предоставляют кров. Подразумевается, что это ненадолго, но само собой выходит, что Фаррелл становится третьим обитателем дома Зии. Четвертым, если считать престарелую овчарку Брисеиду.
Постоялец он необременительный: тотчас устроился в кафе, покупает продукты и готовит разные вкусности, собаку выгуливает, музицирует по вечерам, услаждая слух хозяев - так все и идет. Постепенно выбор друга становится Фарреллу более понятен, в этой женщине, впрямь, что-то необыкновенное, сила, харизма, неожиданная царственность. А вскоре герой оказывается допущен в круг посвященных, чей досуг отдан ролевым играм с реконструкцией рыцарских и куртуазных обычаев средневековья, которыми увлекаются в Авиценне представители интеллектуальной элиты, ну знаете, одежды, манеры, оружие - вот это все.
И буквально на первой такого рода вечеринке становится случайным свидетелем ритуала, посредством которого девочка-подросток Эйффи вызывает из потустороннего мира некое существо, принявшее облик красивого юноши. То есть, кто другой попытался бы подобрать явлению Никласа Боннера рациональное объяснение. но Фарреллу приходилось уже сталкиваться со сверхъестественным, некоторые люди более открыты таким вещам, и он всерьез напуган. Ну, потому что забавляться призывом демонов примерно так же безопасно, как играть со спичками во время сильной засухи.
В чем леди и джентльмены. предающиеся архаическим развлечениям, скоро убедятся. Но пока привычка к рациональному мышлению заставляет отмахиваться от предупреждений и закрывать глаза на очевидное. К несчастью для участников. К счастью для читателей. Потому что это потрясающе интересная история. Остроумная, мудрая, волшебная, поэтичная, простая и сложная, с горечью хинина во вкусе и медовой сладостью в послевкусии. И таки да. Питер Бигл гений, Сергей Ильин тоже был гением.
Ну сделайте же это, господа издатели, есть еще дивная Песнь Трактирщика (The Innkeeper's song), чтоб умный добрый наш народ знал Питера Бигла не только по "Последнему Единорогу". Внакладе не останетесь.
September 7, 2022
Build Your Library 2022: a book you would bring with you on a desert island
This was the first book I read by Peter Beagle, and it's still my favorite. I was a geek growing up, before geeks were cool, and I loved the description of the SCA-like organization, and the reasons that people participated- something to keep you sane when the world was so very boring and mundane, ironically.
Of course, there's the bad side to role-playing, too, the side that seeks power. In this book, a teenage witch discovers that she can actually do magic. She summons an unnatural being, Nicholas Bonner, and proceeds to throw her weight around so that people will notice her and want to be her friend. As one character said, "I never wanted power so much as I did when I was fifteen." However, Beagle keeps this girl from being a cookie-cutter villain and actually makes the reader feel some small amount of empathy for her.
Meanwhile, our main character has come to visit his best friend and meet the friend's new girlfriend, Sia. Sia turns out to be much more than meets the eye as well.
I was drawn into the tentative romances, the emotions of the characters, and the dangerous, wild magic. The book evoked just how I felt in my early 20's, not quite sure if I was grown up and if it was still okay to play, and with rawly exposed feelings.
I can't really say too much about the plot without giving away the whole thing, so I'll say that the ending was more gentle and generous than one would suppose, which I also liked.
I'll always have a crush on this book.
Update: I re-read this book for a challenge. Each time I re-read it I see something different and this time the nostalgia theme hit me really hard. Pretty much everyone in this book is seeking comfort in the past in some way.
This was the first book I read by Peter Beagle, and it's still my favorite. I was a geek growing up, before geeks were cool, and I loved the description of the SCA-like organization, and the reasons that people participated- something to keep you sane when the world was so very boring and mundane, ironically.
Of course, there's the bad side to role-playing, too, the side that seeks power. In this book, a teenage witch discovers that she can actually do magic. She summons an unnatural being, Nicholas Bonner, and proceeds to throw her weight around so that people will notice her and want to be her friend. As one character said, "I never wanted power so much as I did when I was fifteen." However, Beagle keeps this girl from being a cookie-cutter villain and actually makes the reader feel some small amount of empathy for her.
Meanwhile, our main character has come to visit his best friend and meet the friend's new girlfriend, Sia. Sia turns out to be much more than meets the eye as well.
I was drawn into the tentative romances, the emotions of the characters, and the dangerous, wild magic. The book evoked just how I felt in my early 20's, not quite sure if I was grown up and if it was still okay to play, and with rawly exposed feelings.
I can't really say too much about the plot without giving away the whole thing, so I'll say that the ending was more gentle and generous than one would suppose, which I also liked.
I'll always have a crush on this book.
Update: I re-read this book for a challenge. Each time I re-read it I see something different and this time the nostalgia theme hit me really hard. Pretty much everyone in this book is seeking comfort in the past in some way.
June 27, 2022
An exceptionally well-crafted tale (therefore on par for Beagle), written decades before LARPing was mainstream enough to be uncool; probably the first to look at reenacting and fantasy role-play and ask that most obvious kick-off-a-story-from-this-space question, "but what if someone pretending to do magic accidentally casts a spell??"
In the wake of internet pop-culture viralities like lightning bolt! and indie films like the documentary Darkon or its deliberately B- fantasy/horror counterpart, Knights of Badassdom, going back to enjoy a serious novel with this premise is a tall order. Fortunately, Beagle is skilled enough to keep his book above the morass that followed: Folk of the Air remains a greatly enjoyable story, and beautifully written.
Characters and situations feel solidly authentic. Other-worldliness harmonizes with this-worldliness. Magic is dangerous, even when it's beautiful and come by honestly; or else ugly when used for power and egotism. The plot is interrupted, or twinned, with adult life - with its responsibilities, wants, and limits. Apart from the premise - which was still credible when Beagle found it - this is a pretty great fantasy.
It has one other minor flaw. In his acknowledgments, Beagle admits he had trouble bring the book to a close. Although I did love the climax and ending, he doesn't give the protagonists an active contribution; they are witnesses, but they had already played their parts as far as Beagle could write them within the cosmology he imagined. This bystander relegation undercuts the final-act urgency, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but Beagle doesn't wrap it into commentary on heroism, which could have added thematic depth. So I was left a little unsatisfied.
In the wake of internet pop-culture viralities like lightning bolt! and indie films like the documentary Darkon or its deliberately B- fantasy/horror counterpart, Knights of Badassdom, going back to enjoy a serious novel with this premise is a tall order. Fortunately, Beagle is skilled enough to keep his book above the morass that followed: Folk of the Air remains a greatly enjoyable story, and beautifully written.
Characters and situations feel solidly authentic. Other-worldliness harmonizes with this-worldliness. Magic is dangerous, even when it's beautiful and come by honestly; or else ugly when used for power and egotism. The plot is interrupted, or twinned, with adult life - with its responsibilities, wants, and limits. Apart from the premise - which was still credible when Beagle found it - this is a pretty great fantasy.
It has one other minor flaw. In his acknowledgments, Beagle admits he had trouble bring the book to a close. Although I did love the climax and ending, he doesn't give the protagonists an active contribution; they are witnesses, but they had already played their parts as far as Beagle could write them within the cosmology he imagined. This bystander relegation undercuts the final-act urgency, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but Beagle doesn't wrap it into commentary on heroism, which could have added thematic depth. So I was left a little unsatisfied.
January 2, 2019
Honestly, I couldn’t describe this book to you if I tried. I’m not sure what I just read. But I know that it was beautifully written and intensely satisfying.
May 16, 2014
In Which Peter Beagle Discovers the SCA, and Thinks it is Pretty Nifty.
Joe Farrell, a hippieish slacker lute player wanders into the super-Berkeley-ish town of Avicenna, California to crash with his old friend Ben for a while. Ben and Joe's old friend-and-lover Julie introduce Joe to the SCA (I mean, the League of Archaic Pleasures), who's delighted to embrace an expert lutenist.
Joe is slightly weirded out by his friend's new lover, who's much older than Ben, and rather strange. But he rolls with it. However, as he gets deeper into the League, the mundane and the supernatural, the past and the present become intertwined as malicious witchcraft and ancient nature magic head toward a showdown; and innocent enthusiasts may just be in the way of forces beyond their control.
I had mixed feelings about the book. As someone familiar with the SCA, I wasn't really that enthused about the detailed descriptions of the activities of the group, which take up quite a bit of real estate here. It takes quite a long time to get into anything supernatural or fantastic at all, and I just wasn't that interested in Joe Farrell's rootless life, his hobbies, or his romantic issues.
However, once it does get going - there's some powerful, good stuff here. It features an excellent portrayal of a nature goddess. In many ways, the goddess here reminded me of another, older aspect of George MacDonald's goddess figures (although I think that might have rather horrified MacDonald).
Joe Farrell, a hippieish slacker lute player wanders into the super-Berkeley-ish town of Avicenna, California to crash with his old friend Ben for a while. Ben and Joe's old friend-and-lover Julie introduce Joe to the SCA (I mean, the League of Archaic Pleasures), who's delighted to embrace an expert lutenist.
Joe is slightly weirded out by his friend's new lover, who's much older than Ben, and rather strange. But he rolls with it. However, as he gets deeper into the League, the mundane and the supernatural, the past and the present become intertwined as malicious witchcraft and ancient nature magic head toward a showdown; and innocent enthusiasts may just be in the way of forces beyond their control.
I had mixed feelings about the book. As someone familiar with the SCA, I wasn't really that enthused about the detailed descriptions of the activities of the group, which take up quite a bit of real estate here. It takes quite a long time to get into anything supernatural or fantastic at all, and I just wasn't that interested in Joe Farrell's rootless life, his hobbies, or his romantic issues.
However, once it does get going - there's some powerful, good stuff here. It features an excellent portrayal of a nature goddess. In many ways, the goddess here reminded me of another, older aspect of George MacDonald's goddess figures (although I think that might have rather horrified MacDonald).
December 31, 2010
Peter Beagle is one of those wonderful writers whose skill with language and imagery provides constant amazement. He casually tosses out phrases that other writers might save up for years ("the house was ordinary, a place where a goddess had never lived") and provides fun, quirky dialog that seems to come from real people.
With all that going for him, I don't really look for much else in his novels. Sometimes the plot doesn't show up until half-way through the book and that's fine. If you like your stories to be close and logical without loose ends, don't look here.
As to the actual story in this case, it's a little bit dressed up from the kind of "what if my D&D character was real!" plot that publishers must get by the truckload. A thinly disguised SCA group has a real witch in their midst and evil hi-jinks ensue. The book is more about the main character's return to Berkley (equally disguised as Avicenna, CA) and trying to pick up old friendships and relationships, a lifestyle that seems to suit him while he admits that he's never really growing up, just messing around with stuff.
If you like your modern fantasy lush and rich, this is for you. If you want Hogwarts and rules of magic and that sort of thing, try another writer.
With all that going for him, I don't really look for much else in his novels. Sometimes the plot doesn't show up until half-way through the book and that's fine. If you like your stories to be close and logical without loose ends, don't look here.
As to the actual story in this case, it's a little bit dressed up from the kind of "what if my D&D character was real!" plot that publishers must get by the truckload. A thinly disguised SCA group has a real witch in their midst and evil hi-jinks ensue. The book is more about the main character's return to Berkley (equally disguised as Avicenna, CA) and trying to pick up old friendships and relationships, a lifestyle that seems to suit him while he admits that he's never really growing up, just messing around with stuff.
If you like your modern fantasy lush and rich, this is for you. If you want Hogwarts and rules of magic and that sort of thing, try another writer.
June 10, 2015
A flawed masterpiece. Although parts of the book were less engaging than I might have hoped for, most of it sang to me. The images, characters, and scenes in this book have stayed with me for years, like a distant heartbeat. Like old friends I've lost touch with and would like to check in with.
It's one of the only books to use fantasy role playing in an effective manner as a springboard from a contemporary setting to Elsewhere. It combines mysticism, magic, and alchemy without straining.
It's one of the only books to use fantasy role playing in an effective manner as a springboard from a contemporary setting to Elsewhere. It combines mysticism, magic, and alchemy without straining.
February 4, 2011
I've been on a rereading jag lately -- mostly books I have fond but vague memory of. Let me just say that Austen and D.H. Lawrence haven't fared too well, and I haven't had the nerve to pick up my favorite Durrell for fear of the same.
Genre fiction, on the other hand, has fared better. I read the Folk of the Air years and years ago -- randomly plucked from the shelf of my local library. Something about its mix of Society for Creative Anachronism, living goddesses and academics possessed by Viking warrior-skalds really appealed to me. I was surprised when I read that the novel was considered one of Beagle's failures and that it had ignominiously gone out of print. Then I put it back on the library shelf and pretty much forgot about it. Except every time I heard the word griot, or the the names Prester John and Kannon, I'd remember that this novel was the one that had forced me to look them up.
Thank heavens for Amazon's used books.
It's easier now to see the book's flaws. The setting, Avicenna, is a city viewed through post-hippie rosy lenses (wire-rimmed, yet). The characters, though ethnically diverse, are all uniformly middle class and (mostly) college educated. The showdown between goddess and witch is still too long and not quite on the mark.
Still, it is a lovely book with genuinely inspired moments (I love the moments with Kannon and Sia, for example) and Beagle is a big-hearted writer. He honors every character with which he populates the novel, which I think is altogether too rare in genre fiction (and just as rare in non-genre fiction, imho). I wasn't unhappy to have devoted the time to rereading this (or spending the money for my own copy) which is more than I can say for some of the other books I've picked up for a second time. I think the book deserves a wider readership.
Genre fiction, on the other hand, has fared better. I read the Folk of the Air years and years ago -- randomly plucked from the shelf of my local library. Something about its mix of Society for Creative Anachronism, living goddesses and academics possessed by Viking warrior-skalds really appealed to me. I was surprised when I read that the novel was considered one of Beagle's failures and that it had ignominiously gone out of print. Then I put it back on the library shelf and pretty much forgot about it. Except every time I heard the word griot, or the the names Prester John and Kannon, I'd remember that this novel was the one that had forced me to look them up.
Thank heavens for Amazon's used books.
It's easier now to see the book's flaws. The setting, Avicenna, is a city viewed through post-hippie rosy lenses (wire-rimmed, yet). The characters, though ethnically diverse, are all uniformly middle class and (mostly) college educated. The showdown between goddess and witch is still too long and not quite on the mark.
Still, it is a lovely book with genuinely inspired moments (I love the moments with Kannon and Sia, for example) and Beagle is a big-hearted writer. He honors every character with which he populates the novel, which I think is altogether too rare in genre fiction (and just as rare in non-genre fiction, imho). I wasn't unhappy to have devoted the time to rereading this (or spending the money for my own copy) which is more than I can say for some of the other books I've picked up for a second time. I think the book deserves a wider readership.
June 25, 2008
I love this book, love it. Funny and fantastic and even spiritual (don't be skeered). American professor Ben Kassoy mystically trades places with a ninth-century Norse Viking called Egil Eyvindsson. He tells his friend Farrell that Egil “didn’t think much of our civilization.” He thought it was probably all right for “people who don’t really care about anything.”
This is Farrell’s problem, the central problem of the book: There really is nothing to believe in anymore. The League for Archaic Pleasures solves it by living a fantasy of medieval life in modern-day California, like the most deeply involved members of the Society for Creative Anachronism, which is Beagle’s model. Even amid the glamour, excitement, and variety of Avicenna (a thinly disguised Berkeley), there is no reality as compelling as Egil’s world, the world that the “folk of the air” superficially recreate, that Farrell’s lute recalls, which “believes in God and hell and the king.” But the League’s groupthinking devotion to their own fantasy is so thoroughgoing that when confronted by true mystery—by a witch making real magic, a real immortal, real medieval warriors transported across time with real deadly weapons, by real gods—they force them into the ticky-tacky boxes of their ordinary, modernist, middle-class expectations, taking them for more shams and shadows.
At the book’s denouement, Farrell, who began as a skeptical, directionless observer, finds himself drawn forth on a quest—literally driven out by a big dog to find a missing god, or possibly his own God. The reader is left with a similar challenge: Among all the varied splendors of the twentieth century, can you find something worth living for?
This is Farrell’s problem, the central problem of the book: There really is nothing to believe in anymore. The League for Archaic Pleasures solves it by living a fantasy of medieval life in modern-day California, like the most deeply involved members of the Society for Creative Anachronism, which is Beagle’s model. Even amid the glamour, excitement, and variety of Avicenna (a thinly disguised Berkeley), there is no reality as compelling as Egil’s world, the world that the “folk of the air” superficially recreate, that Farrell’s lute recalls, which “believes in God and hell and the king.” But the League’s groupthinking devotion to their own fantasy is so thoroughgoing that when confronted by true mystery—by a witch making real magic, a real immortal, real medieval warriors transported across time with real deadly weapons, by real gods—they force them into the ticky-tacky boxes of their ordinary, modernist, middle-class expectations, taking them for more shams and shadows.
At the book’s denouement, Farrell, who began as a skeptical, directionless observer, finds himself drawn forth on a quest—literally driven out by a big dog to find a missing god, or possibly his own God. The reader is left with a similar challenge: Among all the varied splendors of the twentieth century, can you find something worth living for?
July 12, 2009
The one where Farrell the lute player gets involved with a Medieval reenactment society that turns out to have an actual witch in it.
My chief problem with this was Farrell's characterization, which consisted entirely of other people telling him what his characterization was. "You never get angry, Joe," they say. "You don't connect with anyone. You just come into town and leave town." And then the next one says the same thing.
Aiffe and Sia are well realized, but the two other significant characters, Julie and Ben, are oddly flat.
There's also an incredible excess of quirky extras being quirky -- sometimes literally every paragraph on the entire page will have some unnamed person in the background doing something quirky. Something about San Francisco does this to stories. It's very sad.
I've noted before the difficulty of portraying magical battles -- the way they tend to get either passive or incomprehensible. Beagle does a good job of avoiding that through most of the book -- generally the magic is active in the physical world. The climactic battle, though, first turns into an extended she-turns-into-an-elephant-so-I-turn-into-a-mouse thing like the old ballads, and then, when faced with the critical question of how Sia solves the problem of Nicholas, just becomes ... incomprehensible again.
My chief problem with this was Farrell's characterization, which consisted entirely of other people telling him what his characterization was. "You never get angry, Joe," they say. "You don't connect with anyone. You just come into town and leave town." And then the next one says the same thing.
Aiffe and Sia are well realized, but the two other significant characters, Julie and Ben, are oddly flat.
There's also an incredible excess of quirky extras being quirky -- sometimes literally every paragraph on the entire page will have some unnamed person in the background doing something quirky. Something about San Francisco does this to stories. It's very sad.
I've noted before the difficulty of portraying magical battles -- the way they tend to get either passive or incomprehensible. Beagle does a good job of avoiding that through most of the book -- generally the magic is active in the physical world. The climactic battle, though, first turns into an extended she-turns-into-an-elephant-so-I-turn-into-a-mouse thing like the old ballads, and then, when faced with the critical question of how Sia solves the problem of Nicholas, just becomes ... incomprehensible again.
May 9, 2020
this book has been living in a plastic box in the corner of my bedroom for 4 years and now that I am into it, hoo I am into it
October 14, 2025
Solid contemporary fantasy, not available as an e-book (interlibrary loan to the rescue!). Rumors are that the author may be revising it or writing a sequel.
There are many great characters here. The main character is a lute-playing driver of an aging Volkswagen bus who does odd jobs. The scene is California and the framing is an early version of the Society for Creative Anachronism - folks that dress up and fight with medieval weapons. Add in real magic and/or time travel and things get very interesting. Beagle's lyrical writing and wry observations let me feel like I was there. Winner of the 1987 Mythopoeic award.
I didn't read this in one sitting, and the plethora of SCA characters got jumbled in my head. Various musicians were introduced but didn't seem to go anywhere. I also wonder if there was a thread of reference that I missed, especially connected to the dog, Briseis. I wanted more from biker Julie Tanikawa. Favorite throwaway line at the end - the upcoming world series between Seattle and Atlanta - bring it on!
Would absolutely read a rewritten or updated version, or a sequel. Coming soon - a reread of Beagle's most famous book.
There are many great characters here. The main character is a lute-playing driver of an aging Volkswagen bus who does odd jobs. The scene is California and the framing is an early version of the Society for Creative Anachronism - folks that dress up and fight with medieval weapons. Add in real magic and/or time travel and things get very interesting. Beagle's lyrical writing and wry observations let me feel like I was there. Winner of the 1987 Mythopoeic award.
I didn't read this in one sitting, and the plethora of SCA characters got jumbled in my head. Various musicians were introduced but didn't seem to go anywhere. I also wonder if there was a thread of reference that I missed, especially connected to the dog, Briseis. I wanted more from biker Julie Tanikawa. Favorite throwaway line at the end - the upcoming world series between Seattle and Atlanta - bring it on!
Would absolutely read a rewritten or updated version, or a sequel. Coming soon - a reread of Beagle's most famous book.
July 11, 2011
Kip and I seem to've had somewhat similar reactions to this book. To wit: we are _very_ curious about how it managed to escape its native time stream and crash-land here.
_Folk of the Air_ is a flawed but fully-realized specimen of a basically alien subgenre, which resembles urban fantasy in the same way that platypi are kind of like mammals.
Joe Farrell, of "Lila the Werewolf" non-fame, comes back home to Avicenna, CA, in his shitty Volkswagen van. He falls back in with his best friend and his old flame, and they reluctantly introduce him to the League for Archaic Pleasures, the local SCA stand-in, where he's welcomed as a lutanist. But all the goings-on are tainted with some bad blood that no one will properly talk about, and his friend Ben's alter ego seems more real than Ben himself these days, and everything seems fallen and decaying.
And yeah, there are people using magic, sort of, and there are magical beings living right alongside the normal world, and there's a sense of discovering something secret and bigger that expands the world further than you thought it would go, and a vivid sense of the place in which it's set, and there's music that has power on top of all that, which would sure seem to be hitting that classic _War for the Oaks_-inspired urban fantasy checklist as far as plot and thematic content go, wouldn't it. But... eggs and a duck bill.
Part of it is about empowerment. Urban fantasy inherits a persistent interest in growing stronger and influencing the shape of the world, which manifests in its degenerate form as the badass spell-slinging mystery-solving cowgirl who casts fireball for mumble mumble DPS. And there's not so much of that here. The numinous stays bloody well numinous, and Joe Farrell stays quite powerless, in the aboveground and underground worlds alike. He doesn't have any magical powers, he can't really fight worth a damn. He can play music really really well, and that earns him respect and camaraderie, but it doesn't make anyone really listen to him. He has friendships and connections, but even these prove easily damaged whenever some malevolent force turns its attention his way. And he's not in town to actually, ultimately, _accomplish_ anything; more to witness something, I think.
(And in a bit I'm still kind of puzzling over, he has the chance to tell the temporal authorities about Aiffe and Bonner, and he shies away from it at the last minute. Sure, it would have been futile, but it's the one thing he had the power to do, and he didn't. I can't help but feel he failed the test of heroism from _Fire and Hemlock:_ a hero is one who does the thing they have to even if it feels ridiculous.)
There are other things, and I kind of just have to grasp at them as they pass, because I don't have a complete theory of this book.
- So, you know how the other world simmering beneath our own is usually made out to be more real than reality, a step outwards from the cave? The other world in this book, in both its forms (the League, and the world of spirits and gods), is dreamlike and faint. Instead of heroism and drive, it induces passivity and forgetfulness.
- Farrell's string of crappy jobs seems to be another disconnect from UF proper, though I'm having a hard time articulating why. Something about the other world not integrating into the protagonist's life in the same way. Like, in _City of Roses,_ events in the under/other world just will _not_ stop interfering in Jo's ability to make ends meet; Eddy's supernatural band plays gigs out in the town. Half the time, the protag seems to end up going into business with the elves, in one way or another; Farrell sure doesn't. The fantastick has to fit in around his day job.
- Sia. I don't even know where to start.
- Aiffe. I don't even know where to start.
- The ebb and flow of the things that break the surface tension of reality. It's oddly episodic, with the truly energetic weird stuff only coming in when the League is in session. (Sia's house excepted, of course.)
It's a weird book, wavering wildly between earthy and abstract. It has major problems -- parts of it don't seem to glue together quite right, and the pacing is off, and some threads seem to slip out of Beagle's control by the end. But it does some things very right in some very unfamiliar ways, and it makes me wonder about all the other books lying dusty in some diverged world where the monotremes won.
Also, I think it is of dire professional importance that I read a whole shitload of potentially bad urban fantasy and develop some more complete theories about all this shit.
_Folk of the Air_ is a flawed but fully-realized specimen of a basically alien subgenre, which resembles urban fantasy in the same way that platypi are kind of like mammals.
Joe Farrell, of "Lila the Werewolf" non-fame, comes back home to Avicenna, CA, in his shitty Volkswagen van. He falls back in with his best friend and his old flame, and they reluctantly introduce him to the League for Archaic Pleasures, the local SCA stand-in, where he's welcomed as a lutanist. But all the goings-on are tainted with some bad blood that no one will properly talk about, and his friend Ben's alter ego seems more real than Ben himself these days, and everything seems fallen and decaying.
And yeah, there are people using magic, sort of, and there are magical beings living right alongside the normal world, and there's a sense of discovering something secret and bigger that expands the world further than you thought it would go, and a vivid sense of the place in which it's set, and there's music that has power on top of all that, which would sure seem to be hitting that classic _War for the Oaks_-inspired urban fantasy checklist as far as plot and thematic content go, wouldn't it. But... eggs and a duck bill.
Part of it is about empowerment. Urban fantasy inherits a persistent interest in growing stronger and influencing the shape of the world, which manifests in its degenerate form as the badass spell-slinging mystery-solving cowgirl who casts fireball for mumble mumble DPS. And there's not so much of that here. The numinous stays bloody well numinous, and Joe Farrell stays quite powerless, in the aboveground and underground worlds alike. He doesn't have any magical powers, he can't really fight worth a damn. He can play music really really well, and that earns him respect and camaraderie, but it doesn't make anyone really listen to him. He has friendships and connections, but even these prove easily damaged whenever some malevolent force turns its attention his way. And he's not in town to actually, ultimately, _accomplish_ anything; more to witness something, I think.
(And in a bit I'm still kind of puzzling over, he has the chance to tell the temporal authorities about Aiffe and Bonner, and he shies away from it at the last minute. Sure, it would have been futile, but it's the one thing he had the power to do, and he didn't. I can't help but feel he failed the test of heroism from _Fire and Hemlock:_ a hero is one who does the thing they have to even if it feels ridiculous.)
There are other things, and I kind of just have to grasp at them as they pass, because I don't have a complete theory of this book.
- So, you know how the other world simmering beneath our own is usually made out to be more real than reality, a step outwards from the cave? The other world in this book, in both its forms (the League, and the world of spirits and gods), is dreamlike and faint. Instead of heroism and drive, it induces passivity and forgetfulness.
- Farrell's string of crappy jobs seems to be another disconnect from UF proper, though I'm having a hard time articulating why. Something about the other world not integrating into the protagonist's life in the same way. Like, in _City of Roses,_ events in the under/other world just will _not_ stop interfering in Jo's ability to make ends meet; Eddy's supernatural band plays gigs out in the town. Half the time, the protag seems to end up going into business with the elves, in one way or another; Farrell sure doesn't. The fantastick has to fit in around his day job.
- Sia. I don't even know where to start.
- Aiffe. I don't even know where to start.
- The ebb and flow of the things that break the surface tension of reality. It's oddly episodic, with the truly energetic weird stuff only coming in when the League is in session. (Sia's house excepted, of course.)
It's a weird book, wavering wildly between earthy and abstract. It has major problems -- parts of it don't seem to glue together quite right, and the pacing is off, and some threads seem to slip out of Beagle's control by the end. But it does some things very right in some very unfamiliar ways, and it makes me wonder about all the other books lying dusty in some diverged world where the monotremes won.
Also, I think it is of dire professional importance that I read a whole shitload of potentially bad urban fantasy and develop some more complete theories about all this shit.
Read
September 8, 2011The characters in this book belong to a medieval re-creation society much like one I once belonged to myself, but along with dressing up in historic garb and re-creating medieval foods and entertainments and so on, they also get mixed up with some actual magic and actual time travel.
The author gets the details of that kind of hobby - more than a hobby, really, but an obsession for many - exactly right. There were so many familiar details. One that struck me was how the children of the serious members are part of the whole thing and have no problem naturally going back and forth between talking about their parent being, say, a lord and whatever he does in real life. Another who I sympathized with was a character who despaired of the fake medieval language that everyone spoke. It's so true that everyone has their own sub-obsessions, and are driven crazy that other people don't care about, say, getting their shoes exactly right, while the shoe person is simultaneously driving someone else crazy because they're willing to play a musical instrument made of plastic.
But also, there are observations about the people that I wasn't wise enough to see so long ago but that feel exactly right. There's one character who's a bus driver and describes her job and says "You think I could stand that shit if I thought that was real life?" Later, she was going to quit the group but doesn't and says "I got to be someone besides that damn bus driver now and again." For me, it wasn't that kind of escape, and I was much too young at the time to notice which of my fellow re-creationists were that person, but I feel sure that they were there.
My favorite character of all was the college professor who gets to sometimes switch places with someone who lives in the time period that he studies. If you've ever been seriously interested in something like the music of the distant past, as I was, it's such a frustrating feeling to know that you will never truly know what it sounded like or what it felt like to hear it for the first time. The passion of that character about the period he studies was so right, and I could totally sympathize with the terrible risks he was willing to take to experience the past first-hand.
I also particularly enjoyed the fact that most of the people didn't recognize magic when they saw it and explained it away as something else - even though they are people who live this seriously elaborate fantasy life. Another detail that seemed to me to be exactly right.
Oh, and, yeah, there was a plot, and it was fine, and ended in a satisfactory manner.
The author gets the details of that kind of hobby - more than a hobby, really, but an obsession for many - exactly right. There were so many familiar details. One that struck me was how the children of the serious members are part of the whole thing and have no problem naturally going back and forth between talking about their parent being, say, a lord and whatever he does in real life. Another who I sympathized with was a character who despaired of the fake medieval language that everyone spoke. It's so true that everyone has their own sub-obsessions, and are driven crazy that other people don't care about, say, getting their shoes exactly right, while the shoe person is simultaneously driving someone else crazy because they're willing to play a musical instrument made of plastic.
But also, there are observations about the people that I wasn't wise enough to see so long ago but that feel exactly right. There's one character who's a bus driver and describes her job and says "You think I could stand that shit if I thought that was real life?" Later, she was going to quit the group but doesn't and says "I got to be someone besides that damn bus driver now and again." For me, it wasn't that kind of escape, and I was much too young at the time to notice which of my fellow re-creationists were that person, but I feel sure that they were there.
My favorite character of all was the college professor who gets to sometimes switch places with someone who lives in the time period that he studies. If you've ever been seriously interested in something like the music of the distant past, as I was, it's such a frustrating feeling to know that you will never truly know what it sounded like or what it felt like to hear it for the first time. The passion of that character about the period he studies was so right, and I could totally sympathize with the terrible risks he was willing to take to experience the past first-hand.
I also particularly enjoyed the fact that most of the people didn't recognize magic when they saw it and explained it away as something else - even though they are people who live this seriously elaborate fantasy life. Another detail that seemed to me to be exactly right.
Oh, and, yeah, there was a plot, and it was fine, and ended in a satisfactory manner.
October 11, 2009
The Folk of the Air is my first Peter Beagle book, and I certainly have been remiss in taking this long to get to him. And while I'm given to understand that this is considered to be one of his more flawed works, it's nonetheless a lovely introduction to what the man can do with the written word.
There's definite magic for me in this prose. Right out of the gate, I adored that the hero's Volkswagen van was named Madame Schumann-Heink, that the vehicle was very definitely a "she", and that she normally couldn't make it to fifty miles an hour without a tailwind and two days' advance notice. I loved the casual juxtaposition of a thinly-disguised SCA with actual magic; this made the whole thing play for me as less a fantasy novel per se and almost more as magic realism, which is not a bad thing. And I very much loved that the character Sia, the crux around which the action revolves, is not beautiful or young or even overtly desirable; she is, however, elemental and primal and very compelling. She is a pillar of stone against the sound and fury of young Aiffe and Nicholas Bonner.
In the midst of all of this, protagonist Joe Farrell is almost a nonentity. He's likable enough, but he doesn't so much as participate in the action as stumble across it, and he has very few points at which a choice or action of his is necessary to dictate how the plot will flow. As a result he has little character development. Much of what we find out about him as a character is simply because other characters keep telling him he's like this or like that.
There are those who find the ending quite a bit of a mess. I'm not one of them; I followed the ending well enough. But because of Joe's relative lack of active participation, I found it difficult to get really invested in what was going on. Also, it didn't help that there was almost too much quirkiness in many of the side characters. It seemed like pretty much every single minor character was "colorful", to the degree that after a while I couldn't help but feel as though I kept getting hit with a barrage of characters going "look how quirky I am! Look how quirky I am! Aren't I just QUIRKY?"
Still, though, all in all, worth my time. Three stars.
There's definite magic for me in this prose. Right out of the gate, I adored that the hero's Volkswagen van was named Madame Schumann-Heink, that the vehicle was very definitely a "she", and that she normally couldn't make it to fifty miles an hour without a tailwind and two days' advance notice. I loved the casual juxtaposition of a thinly-disguised SCA with actual magic; this made the whole thing play for me as less a fantasy novel per se and almost more as magic realism, which is not a bad thing. And I very much loved that the character Sia, the crux around which the action revolves, is not beautiful or young or even overtly desirable; she is, however, elemental and primal and very compelling. She is a pillar of stone against the sound and fury of young Aiffe and Nicholas Bonner.
In the midst of all of this, protagonist Joe Farrell is almost a nonentity. He's likable enough, but he doesn't so much as participate in the action as stumble across it, and he has very few points at which a choice or action of his is necessary to dictate how the plot will flow. As a result he has little character development. Much of what we find out about him as a character is simply because other characters keep telling him he's like this or like that.
There are those who find the ending quite a bit of a mess. I'm not one of them; I followed the ending well enough. But because of Joe's relative lack of active participation, I found it difficult to get really invested in what was going on. Also, it didn't help that there was almost too much quirkiness in many of the side characters. It seemed like pretty much every single minor character was "colorful", to the degree that after a while I couldn't help but feel as though I kept getting hit with a barrage of characters going "look how quirky I am! Look how quirky I am! Aren't I just QUIRKY?"
Still, though, all in all, worth my time. Three stars.
March 11, 2013
I must say I didn't like this one terribly much. Written in 1977 it has to be one of the earliest urban fantasty style novels I've read. The problem with it was in order to justify the fantasy aspects he had the main characters involved with a pseudo SCA. I found the SCA parts really dull! When the supernatural elements happened they were quite interesting, a young girl playing with dangerous magic, a goddess trapped in her house, a mysterious immortal. The only problem is there wasn't quite enough description of why they were the way they were. It would have been interesting for the witch to have had a bit more of a background and personality, why did she want to have revenge and destroy people? (Besides from being a teenage girl). Bits were quite good but overall I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as his other novels that I've read.
August 22, 2007
This book kind of made me cringe at my faire background. Not bad, but it takes a while for the story to actually materialize.
October 12, 2018
I wanted to be a Beagle completist, given how much I love his body of work. (Seriously, if you're a Beagle virgin, go seek out . . . basically any of his novels aside from this one.) The fact that this one was out of print and I had to go seek out a remaindered library copy didn't dissuade me! I added it to the Beagle section of my fiction shelf and picked it up when I reached a lull in my to-read stack.
I think ultimately I shouldn't have bothered. The Folk of the Air is a deeply strange, often impenetrable fable that's about a group of people who I frankly would rather mock than admire: a bunch of insufferable, overcommitted medieval LARPers in fake-Berkeley (a.k.a. "Avicenna") in the '70s, a decade no one really misses. As soon as I saw that the main character, Farrell, had a lute and a quirky car to whom he'd given a quirky name, I knew I was in trouble.
I don't find weirdness for the sake of weirdness appealing, so the setting of this book is not for me. But I also made it through the entire (long!) novel without ever really understanding how much magic penetrated their Rennfaire crap. It was obvious that lots of aspects of the League were supernatural in one sense or another, but none of it was ever truly explained. Real witches, true prophecies, spiritual possession, weirdos acting weird -- it was never clear to me where the line was drawn between people stepping too far into character and actual magic.
Beagle's use of language was also really tough for me in this book. His sense of narrative is, as always, deft, but I found so many of the turns of phrase in this book confounding. A hotel is said to give off a "marzipan radiance"; the moon is "droopy-looking"; someone in distress makes a "sound like heavy cloth tearing." And the prose is full of similes and metaphors like those. Like . . . what does any of that mean, really? There's a certain amount of wiggle room an audience allows an author for "artistic" prose, especially when the subject at hand is sort of eldritch, but this book wiggles right out of that wiggle room and goes on a long jaunt in the land of "seriously, what are you talking about?"
I'm left at the end of this feeling like it's time to explain why I'm giving 3 stars instead of 2. (1 is reserved for books that should never be read by any human eyes. Not sure I've ever given 1 star.) I just love Peter Beagle, is the problem. Even when he's writing about a bunch of hippie burnouts who need to put down their fake swords and spend a weekend volunteering at a soup kitchen or an animal shelter instead, I still love him. Even through the ridiculousness of this book, I can feel his firm narrative sense guiding the book surely, never missing a step. No plot threads unraveling, no superfluous characters. Everything snaps into place at the end. It's just that what emerges from the assembled puzzle is less than you'd hope for after 330 pages of confounding magical LARPing.
I think ultimately I shouldn't have bothered. The Folk of the Air is a deeply strange, often impenetrable fable that's about a group of people who I frankly would rather mock than admire: a bunch of insufferable, overcommitted medieval LARPers in fake-Berkeley (a.k.a. "Avicenna") in the '70s, a decade no one really misses. As soon as I saw that the main character, Farrell, had a lute and a quirky car to whom he'd given a quirky name, I knew I was in trouble.
I don't find weirdness for the sake of weirdness appealing, so the setting of this book is not for me. But I also made it through the entire (long!) novel without ever really understanding how much magic penetrated their Rennfaire crap. It was obvious that lots of aspects of the League were supernatural in one sense or another, but none of it was ever truly explained. Real witches, true prophecies, spiritual possession, weirdos acting weird -- it was never clear to me where the line was drawn between people stepping too far into character and actual magic.
Beagle's use of language was also really tough for me in this book. His sense of narrative is, as always, deft, but I found so many of the turns of phrase in this book confounding. A hotel is said to give off a "marzipan radiance"; the moon is "droopy-looking"; someone in distress makes a "sound like heavy cloth tearing." And the prose is full of similes and metaphors like those. Like . . . what does any of that mean, really? There's a certain amount of wiggle room an audience allows an author for "artistic" prose, especially when the subject at hand is sort of eldritch, but this book wiggles right out of that wiggle room and goes on a long jaunt in the land of "seriously, what are you talking about?"
I'm left at the end of this feeling like it's time to explain why I'm giving 3 stars instead of 2. (1 is reserved for books that should never be read by any human eyes. Not sure I've ever given 1 star.) I just love Peter Beagle, is the problem. Even when he's writing about a bunch of hippie burnouts who need to put down their fake swords and spend a weekend volunteering at a soup kitchen or an animal shelter instead, I still love him. Even through the ridiculousness of this book, I can feel his firm narrative sense guiding the book surely, never missing a step. No plot threads unraveling, no superfluous characters. Everything snaps into place at the end. It's just that what emerges from the assembled puzzle is less than you'd hope for after 330 pages of confounding magical LARPing.
August 9, 2017
Where magic meets the mundane, it may be exciting but it's certainly not what you were expecting!
I picked this up at the library a few years ago, and found it's a very slow start, The Last Unicorn being my only other Beagle read. Sadly I returned it before finishing, It took me 2 years to find it again (mainly because having not read his work, I forgot both the title and author, just the early premise.) Thank you libraries for "your books are due soon" emails!
Safe to say, the style and characters were intriguing enough to want to know where it went. I was definitely not disappointed.
Also being my first review, I find it hard to say much without giving anything away. Whether you like Beagle, ren faires, fantasy or just a dang good story that leaves a desire for more (yet justifies it's own ending) this is one to add to the list.
I picked this up at the library a few years ago, and found it's a very slow start, The Last Unicorn being my only other Beagle read. Sadly I returned it before finishing, It took me 2 years to find it again (mainly because having not read his work, I forgot both the title and author, just the early premise.) Thank you libraries for "your books are due soon" emails!
Safe to say, the style and characters were intriguing enough to want to know where it went. I was definitely not disappointed.
Also being my first review, I find it hard to say much without giving anything away. Whether you like Beagle, ren faires, fantasy or just a dang good story that leaves a desire for more (yet justifies it's own ending) this is one to add to the list.
July 29, 2023
Enjoyed reading this book but freely admit that it's probably not something that will stick in my mind for long. We're talking fantasy, late 20th century folk encounter the impossible.
The characters are well-drawn and interesting and mostly kind of weird. Sia, the older woman, doesn't leave the house. Farrell, the musician around whom the story centers, kind of drifts through his life without actually getting involved in it. And then there's the teenaged Aiffe who's convinced she's a witch. Somehow the fey and the strange get involved in the League for Archaic Pleasures, people who recreate their own version of Medieval Times, fighting battles to attack and/or defend a small island.
The good news is that the book's first copyright date, 1977, and setting preclude the possibility of anyone pulling out their smart phone to record the goings-on. You'll just have to read the book to find out.
The characters are well-drawn and interesting and mostly kind of weird. Sia, the older woman, doesn't leave the house. Farrell, the musician around whom the story centers, kind of drifts through his life without actually getting involved in it. And then there's the teenaged Aiffe who's convinced she's a witch. Somehow the fey and the strange get involved in the League for Archaic Pleasures, people who recreate their own version of Medieval Times, fighting battles to attack and/or defend a small island.
The good news is that the book's first copyright date, 1977, and setting preclude the possibility of anyone pulling out their smart phone to record the goings-on. You'll just have to read the book to find out.
February 17, 2018
It was a wild adventure. I was quite nervous in the middle. strange ride
July 29, 2025
Altogether weird, esoteric, and fantastical, this reads like an LSD trip by a very, very eloquent larper. The writing is nothing short of sensational, holding together an otherwise flimsy plot.
March 12, 2016
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.
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.
January 7, 2015
It was a bit hard to get into, and there were definitely some lulls. The same basic story, written by any other author, would have likely lost me about 1/3 of the way in. There is just some incredible magic that Peter S. Beagle weaves in his writing that captures my mind and heart and makes me want to finish reading immediately so that I can read more, while also making me hope the book will somehow never end so that I never have to worry about running out of his words.
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