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Time and the Gods: An Omnibus
Of all the weavers of magic, there is none like Lord Dunsany. During his long lifetime he wrote more than sixty books including novels, plays, poetry collections most memorably, innumerable exotic and fantastical short stories.
Here is the very best of Dunsany's extraordinarily evocative tales of Faerie, of dreamworlds and of magic. Considered a major influence on J R R Tolkien and Ursula Le Guin, these are some of the most beguiling fantasies in the English language, including the complete contents of Time and the Gods, The Book of Wonder, The Sword of Welleran, The Gods of Pegana and The Last Book of Wonder.
Here is the very best of Dunsany's extraordinarily evocative tales of Faerie, of dreamworlds and of magic. Considered a major influence on J R R Tolkien and Ursula Le Guin, these are some of the most beguiling fantasies in the English language, including the complete contents of Time and the Gods, The Book of Wonder, The Sword of Welleran, The Gods of Pegana and The Last Book of Wonder.
596 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2000
47 people are currently reading
950 people want to read
About the author
Lord Dunsany
688 books843 followersEdward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, eighteenth baron of Dunsany, was an Anglo-Irish writer and dramatist, notable for his work in fantasy published under the name Lord Dunsany. More than eighty books of his work were published, and his oeuvre includes hundreds of short stories, as well as successful plays, novels and essays. Born to one of the oldest titles in the Irish peerage, he lived much of his life at perhaps Ireland's longest-inhabited home, Dunsany Castle near Tara, received an honourary doctorate from Trinity College, and died in Dublin.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews
September 30, 2019
Fantasía pura sin adulterar, sin cortar ni diluir: fantasía en su máxima expresión: nombres con regusto exótico, descripciones infinitas de ciudades maravillosas, dioses caprichosos y reyes ambiciosos, poetas, músicos, profetas...
Este tipo de antologias deberían venir con una etiqueta de advertencia, pues al tratarse de cuentos muy breves y en su mayoría descriptivos, si se lee de un tirón el lector puede llegar a ser incapaz de distinguir donde empieza un cuento y termina otro, y si encima lo que se describe es una ciudad la única forma que tiene uno de diferenciar una de otras es porque la primera se llama Carcasona y la segunda Andelsprutz. Por eso he tardado tantísimo en leer este libro, no quería que se me empezaran a atragantar tantos nombres y tantas descripciones, y aun habiendo dilatado tanto su lectura, no he podido evitar que el elegante y melifluo estilo de Lord Dunsany terminará por empalagarme en la recta final.
Y es que ese es el único defecto que puedo encontrarle al noble irlandés: la homogeneidad de sus relatos. En su afán por crear una mitología fantástica y construir paisajes maravillosos a base de nombres propios y descripciones fastuosas, los relatos terminan teniendo poquísima sustancia narrativa, lo cual no importaría si fueran pocos relatos, pero es que estamos hablando de una colección de mas de 100 cuentos breves, compuesta en su mayoría por cuentos puramente descriptivos, muy bien escritos, si, pero prácticamente intercambiables si, al igual que yo, la mente del lector distraído no es de quedarse con polisílabas con muchas "ks" o "hs" intercaladas. Sin embargo, tomando la debida precaución que he mencionado, la lectura no se hace pesada, y uno puede perderse tranquilamente en esos mundos de fantasía donde solo se contempla como oficio el de poeta, músico, rey o profeta.
Este tipo de antologias deberían venir con una etiqueta de advertencia, pues al tratarse de cuentos muy breves y en su mayoría descriptivos, si se lee de un tirón el lector puede llegar a ser incapaz de distinguir donde empieza un cuento y termina otro, y si encima lo que se describe es una ciudad la única forma que tiene uno de diferenciar una de otras es porque la primera se llama Carcasona y la segunda Andelsprutz. Por eso he tardado tantísimo en leer este libro, no quería que se me empezaran a atragantar tantos nombres y tantas descripciones, y aun habiendo dilatado tanto su lectura, no he podido evitar que el elegante y melifluo estilo de Lord Dunsany terminará por empalagarme en la recta final.
Y es que ese es el único defecto que puedo encontrarle al noble irlandés: la homogeneidad de sus relatos. En su afán por crear una mitología fantástica y construir paisajes maravillosos a base de nombres propios y descripciones fastuosas, los relatos terminan teniendo poquísima sustancia narrativa, lo cual no importaría si fueran pocos relatos, pero es que estamos hablando de una colección de mas de 100 cuentos breves, compuesta en su mayoría por cuentos puramente descriptivos, muy bien escritos, si, pero prácticamente intercambiables si, al igual que yo, la mente del lector distraído no es de quedarse con polisílabas con muchas "ks" o "hs" intercaladas. Sin embargo, tomando la debida precaución que he mencionado, la lectura no se hace pesada, y uno puede perderse tranquilamente en esos mundos de fantasía donde solo se contempla como oficio el de poeta, músico, rey o profeta.
May 2, 2019
There's "prolific" and then there's an almost six hundred page omnibus with what feels like a zillion stories that still doesn't contain everything you've ever written. Welcome to the many, many strange worlds of Lord Dunsany.
Besides having one of the coolest names in literature (real name: Edward Plunkett) thanks to being an actual baron with a title that apparently dates back to the 15th century (his grandson holds the title now). His family also owned an actual castle from the 12th century so it may not be a surprise that he was either going to write stuff full of madrigals or fairies. Fortunately for us, more often than not he chose the latter.
Since he started writing fantasy at a time when it wasn't even an actual named genre today he's mostly known when he's namechecked by all the people in the Lord Dunsany Fan Club, which included little known folks like HP Lovecraft, JRR Tolkien, Neil Gaiman and Arthur C Clarke, all of whom you hope had pretty good taste.
However, anyone venturing into his oeuvre will probably find themselves in for a bit of a surprise as for the most part his work is wide ranging and doesn't often sound anything like the authors who came to admire him. He's only known for a few novels, notably "The King of Elfland's Daughter" and "The Charwoman's Shadow", both of which are worth reading but one of the knocks people sometimes have on them is that Dunsany's style, a very dream-like style, like the haze of a warm summer day, is more effective in short doses than when he tries to sustain it over an entire book (not that either novel is long).
No one else really wrote like him and anyone who tries doesn't quite have the effortlessness that he had, he's got one of those styles where no matter how hard you try you can't help sounding like someone who's trying to be somebody else. And while his novels were popular it’s the short stories that made him initially famous, despite being set in a made-up world called Pegana and populated by gods with strange names that seemed to be building a new mythology.
That series was "The Gods of Pegana" and for some reason my omnibus sticks it last in the collection, perhaps because it doesn't really ease you into his style as much as drop you without a map into his brain. Consisting of stories that sometimes only a page or two long he lays out the world and the extremely petty gods who live there, the structure means you get a really concentrated dose of Dunsany and as such it feels more potent than the other collections, more of a sustained work. There's not an overall plot, per se, just Dunsany building a world block by block and populating it with some pretty wacky gods that mostly fight amongst themselves without seeming to care about collateral damage.
His style feels at its most ornate here, maybe because of what he's trying to do and so it isn't the best place to start . . . Dunsany's prose is a thing of beauty but not designed for skimming, balanced just on the edge of being literal and mythological and taking some effort to let it conjure the images in your mind. But what sticks has an eerie weirdness to it that makes it seem like a story you think you remember someone telling you a long ago that you just haven't recalled until right at that moment, but it seems right.
Chronologically it's followed by "Time and the Gods", which continues the mythological theme but the stories are starting to cohere into more distinctive entities. They're calm pieces, more like someone relaying a story to you and aren't exactly so much plot driven as mood oriented. They create a world that you're invited where the rules are just skewed enough that everything seems different.
By the time of "The Sword of Welleran" the god stuff is starting to fall away and you're getting these compact tales that somehow in the space of very few pages manage to both create and discard entire worlds, hinting at the weight of histories that came before the story started and becoming more potent in the process ("The Kith of the Elf-Folk" is a good example) . . . he has a way of making this stuff feel real, as if they were events he witnessed in the woods outside the castle walls, conjuring this feel of a strange wild alternate England. "The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth" was popular enough to be released as its own book and it’s a standout, an entire epic compressed into a fraction of the space.
He starts to mix it up with "A Dreamer's Tales", where some of the stories are pure fantasy ("Poltarnees, Beholder of Ocean") and others are the kinds of tales where modern day people tell someone else a tale about fantastic worlds ("The Hashish Man", which I guess is about seeing strange stuff when you're high). More of them are first person, as if Dunsany is constantly wandering around seeing or hearing about strange stuff ("Poor Old Bill", which is pretty close to horror). He rarely repeats himself, even when the stories sometimes seem like variations on someone laying out a scenario that has a punchline in the end . . . sometimes he's so skillful in constructing this stuff that you wind up sitting there as the final line puts the story in a different perspective ("In Zaccarath" does that for me, scary for how little space he has to have that kind of impact). I'd also point out "The Unhappy Body" as a showcase for how brilliantly poetic he could be.
"The Book of Wonder" has two of his more famous stories . . . "The Hoard of the Gibblins", with an ending both funny and terrifying, and "Chu-Bu and Sheemish", another one of those "look how strange this thing is I've uncovered" that wins both for how vivid it feels and the contrast with the quaintness of the ending (I've got a tiki head from Hawaii on my mantle so I kind of get this one). I also found "The Wonderful Window" striking, taking the same theme from "The Hashish Man" one step further and then making it more emotionally compelling, especially for anyone who ever got so immersed in a world they wished they were somewhere else.
"The Last Book of Wonder" has one of more favorites "Thirteen at the Table" and wins the strangeness award for "Why the Milkman Shudders When He Perceives the Dawn", which sounds like it should be a joke except he takes it totally seriously (I'd love to ask him where the idea for that one came). By this time you separate most of his tales into "weird stuff that happens in the real world" and "tales from made up places", but reading each one its amazing the sheer amount of imagination the man possessed, especially in a relatively short span of time (maybe twelve years). I found the utterly fantastic stuff hard to get through at times because Dunsany's language can become so ornate that it's almost overwhelming but the more story oriented tales go down easier. As good as the Pegana stuff is, you have to be in the mood for that type of storytelling, and somewhat on his wavelength. But the rest is an easy sell.
He's not the kind of writer you can devour in great chunks and in a sense publishing so much work in a giant volume does you a disservice. Plowing through one tale after another his style threatens to become ordinary and the stories start to blur together, especially with all the fantastical names. But they're meant to be read slowly (I caught myself skimming sometimes, mostly because I was too often distracted and had to go back and read more carefully, essentially considering a lot of stories are only a couple pages long) and with perhaps a short pause between each one, like listening to a 45 record that you have to flip over to hear the next song. They work best when savored and allowed to settle in the mind, letting you see the world as Dunsany saw it, full of forgotten strangeness and old whimsies waiting to be rediscovered, where civilizations once rose and fell and a walk around the corner could bring you to an encounter with someone being haunted by an ancient idol, or even the idol itself.
Besides having one of the coolest names in literature (real name: Edward Plunkett) thanks to being an actual baron with a title that apparently dates back to the 15th century (his grandson holds the title now). His family also owned an actual castle from the 12th century so it may not be a surprise that he was either going to write stuff full of madrigals or fairies. Fortunately for us, more often than not he chose the latter.
Since he started writing fantasy at a time when it wasn't even an actual named genre today he's mostly known when he's namechecked by all the people in the Lord Dunsany Fan Club, which included little known folks like HP Lovecraft, JRR Tolkien, Neil Gaiman and Arthur C Clarke, all of whom you hope had pretty good taste.
However, anyone venturing into his oeuvre will probably find themselves in for a bit of a surprise as for the most part his work is wide ranging and doesn't often sound anything like the authors who came to admire him. He's only known for a few novels, notably "The King of Elfland's Daughter" and "The Charwoman's Shadow", both of which are worth reading but one of the knocks people sometimes have on them is that Dunsany's style, a very dream-like style, like the haze of a warm summer day, is more effective in short doses than when he tries to sustain it over an entire book (not that either novel is long).
No one else really wrote like him and anyone who tries doesn't quite have the effortlessness that he had, he's got one of those styles where no matter how hard you try you can't help sounding like someone who's trying to be somebody else. And while his novels were popular it’s the short stories that made him initially famous, despite being set in a made-up world called Pegana and populated by gods with strange names that seemed to be building a new mythology.
That series was "The Gods of Pegana" and for some reason my omnibus sticks it last in the collection, perhaps because it doesn't really ease you into his style as much as drop you without a map into his brain. Consisting of stories that sometimes only a page or two long he lays out the world and the extremely petty gods who live there, the structure means you get a really concentrated dose of Dunsany and as such it feels more potent than the other collections, more of a sustained work. There's not an overall plot, per se, just Dunsany building a world block by block and populating it with some pretty wacky gods that mostly fight amongst themselves without seeming to care about collateral damage.
His style feels at its most ornate here, maybe because of what he's trying to do and so it isn't the best place to start . . . Dunsany's prose is a thing of beauty but not designed for skimming, balanced just on the edge of being literal and mythological and taking some effort to let it conjure the images in your mind. But what sticks has an eerie weirdness to it that makes it seem like a story you think you remember someone telling you a long ago that you just haven't recalled until right at that moment, but it seems right.
Chronologically it's followed by "Time and the Gods", which continues the mythological theme but the stories are starting to cohere into more distinctive entities. They're calm pieces, more like someone relaying a story to you and aren't exactly so much plot driven as mood oriented. They create a world that you're invited where the rules are just skewed enough that everything seems different.
By the time of "The Sword of Welleran" the god stuff is starting to fall away and you're getting these compact tales that somehow in the space of very few pages manage to both create and discard entire worlds, hinting at the weight of histories that came before the story started and becoming more potent in the process ("The Kith of the Elf-Folk" is a good example) . . . he has a way of making this stuff feel real, as if they were events he witnessed in the woods outside the castle walls, conjuring this feel of a strange wild alternate England. "The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth" was popular enough to be released as its own book and it’s a standout, an entire epic compressed into a fraction of the space.
He starts to mix it up with "A Dreamer's Tales", where some of the stories are pure fantasy ("Poltarnees, Beholder of Ocean") and others are the kinds of tales where modern day people tell someone else a tale about fantastic worlds ("The Hashish Man", which I guess is about seeing strange stuff when you're high). More of them are first person, as if Dunsany is constantly wandering around seeing or hearing about strange stuff ("Poor Old Bill", which is pretty close to horror). He rarely repeats himself, even when the stories sometimes seem like variations on someone laying out a scenario that has a punchline in the end . . . sometimes he's so skillful in constructing this stuff that you wind up sitting there as the final line puts the story in a different perspective ("In Zaccarath" does that for me, scary for how little space he has to have that kind of impact). I'd also point out "The Unhappy Body" as a showcase for how brilliantly poetic he could be.
"The Book of Wonder" has two of his more famous stories . . . "The Hoard of the Gibblins", with an ending both funny and terrifying, and "Chu-Bu and Sheemish", another one of those "look how strange this thing is I've uncovered" that wins both for how vivid it feels and the contrast with the quaintness of the ending (I've got a tiki head from Hawaii on my mantle so I kind of get this one). I also found "The Wonderful Window" striking, taking the same theme from "The Hashish Man" one step further and then making it more emotionally compelling, especially for anyone who ever got so immersed in a world they wished they were somewhere else.
"The Last Book of Wonder" has one of more favorites "Thirteen at the Table" and wins the strangeness award for "Why the Milkman Shudders When He Perceives the Dawn", which sounds like it should be a joke except he takes it totally seriously (I'd love to ask him where the idea for that one came). By this time you separate most of his tales into "weird stuff that happens in the real world" and "tales from made up places", but reading each one its amazing the sheer amount of imagination the man possessed, especially in a relatively short span of time (maybe twelve years). I found the utterly fantastic stuff hard to get through at times because Dunsany's language can become so ornate that it's almost overwhelming but the more story oriented tales go down easier. As good as the Pegana stuff is, you have to be in the mood for that type of storytelling, and somewhat on his wavelength. But the rest is an easy sell.
He's not the kind of writer you can devour in great chunks and in a sense publishing so much work in a giant volume does you a disservice. Plowing through one tale after another his style threatens to become ordinary and the stories start to blur together, especially with all the fantastical names. But they're meant to be read slowly (I caught myself skimming sometimes, mostly because I was too often distracted and had to go back and read more carefully, essentially considering a lot of stories are only a couple pages long) and with perhaps a short pause between each one, like listening to a 45 record that you have to flip over to hear the next song. They work best when savored and allowed to settle in the mind, letting you see the world as Dunsany saw it, full of forgotten strangeness and old whimsies waiting to be rediscovered, where civilizations once rose and fell and a walk around the corner could bring you to an encounter with someone being haunted by an ancient idol, or even the idol itself.
August 4, 2021
Muy pesado, por momentos me recordaba a la biblia con tantas descripciones y mini relatos que la gran mayoría me han resultado absurdos.
January 25, 2020
The best fantasy I've ever read. Dunsany certainly does give meaning to the word fantasy, as he transforms the normal into the otherworldy so easily, that it almost seems as if he himself was a fairy just roaming this earth. Tolkien, Le Guin, Mieville, Gaiman, Lovecraft all were inspired this man alone, and gave us new perspectives with their works: Middle Earth, Earthsea, Cthulhu, Stardust - I mean c'mon, this is so awesome!
Dunsany's writing is like enjoying a glass of fine red, while tripping on dreams. This is the most fantasy fantasy you'll ever read. It's not for everyone, but god damn, does it make you see and feel things beyond what we know, past the border of twilight (😉).
This collection of short stories is filled with a lot fun adventures, but some drag or lose their magic quickly, but otherwise consistently fun.
Dunsany's writing is like enjoying a glass of fine red, while tripping on dreams. This is the most fantasy fantasy you'll ever read. It's not for everyone, but god damn, does it make you see and feel things beyond what we know, past the border of twilight (😉).
This collection of short stories is filled with a lot fun adventures, but some drag or lose their magic quickly, but otherwise consistently fun.
August 29, 2012
I can scarcely say how much I admire the way Lord Dunsany distills the seizing (and subsequent paralysis) of the mind by an idea, then assaults that hold with some stark realisation. But the characters are never aware of the ironies, they simply play out in the narrative, which is what so successfully imbues these stories with the flavour of true myth (while it may be something less than that, in certain ways it is also almost assuredly something more).
Along with The Gods of Pegana, the present work is an indispensable masterpiece of fantasy and should be read by any serious fan of the genre or aspiring author, and even by those with interest in mythology and folklore.
Along with The Gods of Pegana, the present work is an indispensable masterpiece of fantasy and should be read by any serious fan of the genre or aspiring author, and even by those with interest in mythology and folklore.
October 3, 2024
Un magnífico opiáceo sin necesidad de receta médica, y mucho más eficaz que la morfina.
Así que el libro tiene un título apropiado, porque estos cuentos cumplen lo que prometen (Cuentos de un soñador).
Es como si acompañáramos a un padre que le cuenta cuentos a los niños para dormirlos. Y no tengo dudas de que sus hijos durmieron sus ocho horas, si es que tuvo hijos el barón (su tataranieto, sin embargo, se dedica a quitarle el sueño a los agricultores irlandeses).
Tiene buen decorado, como las casitas inglesas de campo, con nombres evocadores al igual que en el Silmarillion, pero falta sustancia. Para fabulaciones de este tipo ya tenemos a Lewis Carroll o al más jugoso Poe.
Lo más logrado es la parte de los dioses, donde consigue transmitir algunas inquietudes místicas.
No sé si me ha dado un ataque de racionalismo, pero así son las cosas y así se las hemos contado. Colorín colorado.
Así que el libro tiene un título apropiado, porque estos cuentos cumplen lo que prometen (Cuentos de un soñador).
Es como si acompañáramos a un padre que le cuenta cuentos a los niños para dormirlos. Y no tengo dudas de que sus hijos durmieron sus ocho horas, si es que tuvo hijos el barón (su tataranieto, sin embargo, se dedica a quitarle el sueño a los agricultores irlandeses).
Tiene buen decorado, como las casitas inglesas de campo, con nombres evocadores al igual que en el Silmarillion, pero falta sustancia. Para fabulaciones de este tipo ya tenemos a Lewis Carroll o al más jugoso Poe.
Lo más logrado es la parte de los dioses, donde consigue transmitir algunas inquietudes místicas.
No sé si me ha dado un ataque de racionalismo, pero así son las cosas y así se las hemos contado. Colorín colorado.
April 16, 2009
The one thing I will say to those about to read this book is read "The Gods of Pegana" before "Time and the Gods". It was written and published before and it will make more sense read that way around. I have no idea why the stuck "The Gods of Pegana" at the end in this volume.
April 19, 2020
Vale la pena. La edición está muy cuidada. Al ser relatos cortos, puedes leerlo con tranquilidad, pausas, entre otros libros.
Llama la atención lo modernas que son las preocupaciones de aquel entonces.
Llama la atención lo modernas que son las preocupaciones de aquel entonces.
May 30, 2024
I think Gollancz screwed up with this book title, it has the exact same name as the first book in this omnibus and I'm sure that has caused trouble with book orders. Time And The Gods And Other Collections or Six Early Collections would have been more fitting. It contains six collections and I'd argue two of them (Time And The Gods and Gods Of Pegana) could be seen as mosaic novels.
This is an extremely mixed bag, I seem to be cursed in that many of my favorite books are far more difficult than they needed to be yet rewarding enough that I have to persevere. I had my doubts about finishing this one because it was deadly dull much of the way but it surprised me often enough and it has that misty mountain mythopoeticism that I love. Sometimes the prose is indigestible and in ridiculously long paragraphs that would challenge any attention span (good thing most of the stories are very short) and then sometimes he writes beautifully flowing prose that makes me wonder why he didn't write like that more often.
In these early collections Dunsany usually defaults to a stately ceremonial mode with lots of repeated phrases and it can become wearying and grating. But every once in a while he does something completely different that has no resemblance to any other story in the omnibus. This made it easier to keep reading and curious about how far he stretched this in further books.
Dunsany is often called a foundational fantasy writer who helped normalize invented settings but reading Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith didn't prepare me for how different Dunsany is. The stories are almost always told from a great distance, they're often like landscape paintings and that's part of what I like about them, but when it gets to the characters they tend to be left extremely vague and ambiguous, leaving me to wonder if some of the gods have human form or not, or if they are shapeshifters. Time is described as a man with a sword who can do battle with humans by aging them. The first collection has gods leaping across the planet in an instant. One god is suggested to be like a cat and I didn't know how literally to take that. And we get sentient forces of nature, water, hills, mountains; one story has a stream and a road talking to each other. In one landscape description a goddess called Romance is briefly mentioned to be walking around the fields and never mentioned again, I liked the effect.
A lot of this felt quite fresh to me, there are a bunch of writers who have written pastiche of this stuff but I never felt like most of the approaches of these Dunsany stories have become widespread and certainly not done to death. Despite the tired mannerisms.
I wouldn't recommend this whole omnibus as an entry point but I feel that using excerpts from Time And The Gods and Gods Of Pegana in the Penguin Classics collection (In The Land Of Time And Other Fantasy Tales) probably wouldn't work well. The stories have a cumulative effect and I think Time And The Gods is by far the best book in the omnibus, it builds itself up and travels around the world, the descriptions of the forces of nature traveling in the later chapters is really beautiful and "The South Wind" is a nice little sad story.
At a page flipping glance, Gods Of Pegana looks like it will be a much easier read because the stories are shorter than ever and it has lots of short paragraphs but it was actually the most difficult to read and I guess that's why it was kept to the end (despite it being published first).
Other highlights:
- "The Doom Of La Traviata" is incredibly short but made quite a strong impression. It's about the christian god sending a sex worker to hell but the angels can't bear to punish her like that so they leave her outside the gates of hell and she becomes a beautiful flower that watches people going to hell but listens to and feels the breezes of heaven.
- "Thirteen At Table" with the fox hunter who stumbles on the man with ghosts for dinner guests.
- The dog at the start of Time And The Gods that stares people to death (even through shut eyelids).
- I can't remember which story or which collection it was but I loved the part with the god who sends some sort of movement through the mountains as if he's playing them like pipe organs, it was an amazing image, I should have written it down.
- The dreamy image of an old lady singing in her garden.
An extremely mixed bag, generally really dull and occasionally amazing and very fresh. Approach with caution. You're probably better starting with the Penguin collection or King Of Elflands Daughter. I've heard his plays are very good.
This is an extremely mixed bag, I seem to be cursed in that many of my favorite books are far more difficult than they needed to be yet rewarding enough that I have to persevere. I had my doubts about finishing this one because it was deadly dull much of the way but it surprised me often enough and it has that misty mountain mythopoeticism that I love. Sometimes the prose is indigestible and in ridiculously long paragraphs that would challenge any attention span (good thing most of the stories are very short) and then sometimes he writes beautifully flowing prose that makes me wonder why he didn't write like that more often.
In these early collections Dunsany usually defaults to a stately ceremonial mode with lots of repeated phrases and it can become wearying and grating. But every once in a while he does something completely different that has no resemblance to any other story in the omnibus. This made it easier to keep reading and curious about how far he stretched this in further books.
Dunsany is often called a foundational fantasy writer who helped normalize invented settings but reading Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith didn't prepare me for how different Dunsany is. The stories are almost always told from a great distance, they're often like landscape paintings and that's part of what I like about them, but when it gets to the characters they tend to be left extremely vague and ambiguous, leaving me to wonder if some of the gods have human form or not, or if they are shapeshifters. Time is described as a man with a sword who can do battle with humans by aging them. The first collection has gods leaping across the planet in an instant. One god is suggested to be like a cat and I didn't know how literally to take that. And we get sentient forces of nature, water, hills, mountains; one story has a stream and a road talking to each other. In one landscape description a goddess called Romance is briefly mentioned to be walking around the fields and never mentioned again, I liked the effect.
A lot of this felt quite fresh to me, there are a bunch of writers who have written pastiche of this stuff but I never felt like most of the approaches of these Dunsany stories have become widespread and certainly not done to death. Despite the tired mannerisms.
I wouldn't recommend this whole omnibus as an entry point but I feel that using excerpts from Time And The Gods and Gods Of Pegana in the Penguin Classics collection (In The Land Of Time And Other Fantasy Tales) probably wouldn't work well. The stories have a cumulative effect and I think Time And The Gods is by far the best book in the omnibus, it builds itself up and travels around the world, the descriptions of the forces of nature traveling in the later chapters is really beautiful and "The South Wind" is a nice little sad story.
At a page flipping glance, Gods Of Pegana looks like it will be a much easier read because the stories are shorter than ever and it has lots of short paragraphs but it was actually the most difficult to read and I guess that's why it was kept to the end (despite it being published first).
Other highlights:
- "The Doom Of La Traviata" is incredibly short but made quite a strong impression. It's about the christian god sending a sex worker to hell but the angels can't bear to punish her like that so they leave her outside the gates of hell and she becomes a beautiful flower that watches people going to hell but listens to and feels the breezes of heaven.
- "Thirteen At Table" with the fox hunter who stumbles on the man with ghosts for dinner guests.
- The dog at the start of Time And The Gods that stares people to death (even through shut eyelids).
- I can't remember which story or which collection it was but I loved the part with the god who sends some sort of movement through the mountains as if he's playing them like pipe organs, it was an amazing image, I should have written it down.
- The dreamy image of an old lady singing in her garden.
An extremely mixed bag, generally really dull and occasionally amazing and very fresh. Approach with caution. You're probably better starting with the Penguin collection or King Of Elflands Daughter. I've heard his plays are very good.
March 14, 2025
Me sigue sorprendiendo como este autor que influyó en Tolkien y la primera etapa de Lovecraft, dos de los mayores pilares de la fantasía moderna sigue siendo tan desconocido.
Está recopilación de varias de las mejores etapas de Dunsany conforman un libro que pide ser leído con música tranquila mientras te vas quedando dormido.
Una carta de amor al exotismo de lo lejano, de lo antiguo; de lo romántico al fin y al cabo.
Los relatos de la tercera parte son menos idealistas, más macarras y los estereotipos orientalistas más acusados. Siguen siendo fantasía clásica pero la mayoría tienen un giro irónico al final. Esta etapa coincide con el final de la gran guerra por lo que no es de extrañar que el tono sea más cínico.
Está recopilación de varias de las mejores etapas de Dunsany conforman un libro que pide ser leído con música tranquila mientras te vas quedando dormido.
Una carta de amor al exotismo de lo lejano, de lo antiguo; de lo romántico al fin y al cabo.
Los relatos de la tercera parte son menos idealistas, más macarras y los estereotipos orientalistas más acusados. Siguen siendo fantasía clásica pero la mayoría tienen un giro irónico al final. Esta etapa coincide con el final de la gran guerra por lo que no es de extrañar que el tono sea más cínico.
December 13, 2020
Se trata de una antología de relatos breves, algunos muy breves, estructurados en diferentes libros. En los relatos lo que predomina es la fantasía, y se ve una clara influencia sobre las historias de Randolph Carter de Lovecraft, son también relatos de soñadores. Las historias que mas me han gustado pertenecen al "Postrer Libro de los Prodigios", y por mencionar tres, destacaría "La Ciudad en el Páramo de Mallington", que podríamos decir que es de alguna manera un viaje iniciático a un sitio que solo conoce una persona. "Un relato de Tierra y Mar" donde la tripulación del barco pirata "Desesperate Lark" es perseguida a través del desierto del Sahara (con un final excelente) y "El Gabito de los Tres Marineros" o como unos desconocidos pueden ganar una partida de ajedrez a un campeón sacrificando tres peones, un caballo y un alfil. En definitiva, un libro para ir leyendo poquito a poco y disfrutarlo.
January 2, 2017
After "The King of Elflands Daughter" I was curious to read this shock full of shorts from the Master, revered by the likes of Tolkien, Lovecraft or Gaiman. However, either it is really not that great or you definitely shouldn't try to read all at once. In doing so, it became a quite tedious task. His Kunstmärchen, as you might call it, have, as it is usual for the genre, no character-development in the sense of a novel. Instead, it is replaced by a seemingly highly symbolic language. The problem is just, that most of the symbols reveal themselfs either as quite generic ironies of life or as utterly empty and void of any meaning. This is entertainment through fantasy just by amalgamating random phantastical elements which aren't even in themselfs that outlandish.
Still he has created a lot of beautiful images.
Still he has created a lot of beautiful images.
January 31, 2025
Time and the Gods 5/10
The Coming of the Sea 5/10
A Legend of the Dawn 5/10
The Vengeance of Men 5/10
When the Gods Slept 5/10
The King That Was Not 5/10
The Cave of Kai 5/10
The Sorrow of Search 5/10
The Men of Yarnith 5/10
For the Honour of the Gods 5/10
Night and Morning 5/10
Usury 7/10
Mlideen 7/10
The Secret of the Gods 7/10
The South Wind 5/10
The Land of Time 7/10
The Relenting of Sardinac 6/10
The Jest of the Gods 7/10
The Dreams of the Prophet 5/10
The Journey of the King 5/10
Overall 5/10
The Coming of the Sea 5/10
A Legend of the Dawn 5/10
The Vengeance of Men 5/10
When the Gods Slept 5/10
The King That Was Not 5/10
The Cave of Kai 5/10
The Sorrow of Search 5/10
The Men of Yarnith 5/10
For the Honour of the Gods 5/10
Night and Morning 5/10
Usury 7/10
Mlideen 7/10
The Secret of the Gods 7/10
The South Wind 5/10
The Land of Time 7/10
The Relenting of Sardinac 6/10
The Jest of the Gods 7/10
The Dreams of the Prophet 5/10
The Journey of the King 5/10
Overall 5/10
July 4, 2022
I greatly appreciated Dunsanys more Machenesque tales, but quite a few of his high fantasy yarns just aren't to my taste. No denying his mastery of the craft however, and well worthwhile for anyone looking to read something between Ashton-Smith and the decadents.
October 28, 2024
Perfect as an omnibus, including most of his fantastical short story work. Dunsany's writing is as good at evoking wonder as ever, though occasionally marred by the trite repetition of a theme or period-influenced racism.
May 4, 2018
"Whether the dreams and fancies of Yoharneth-Lai be false and the things that are done by day be real, or the things that are done by day be false and the dreams and fancies of Yoharneth-Lai be real, none knoweth."
This is one of the definitive collection of Lord Dunsany's genre-defining short fiction, including stories from his books Time and the Gods, The Sword of Welleran, The Book of Wonder, The Last Book of Wonder, A Dreamer's Tales, and The Gods of Pegana. I have reviewed the former four books separately, but will give an overview of the stories selected from the latter two for this collection below. Overall, this collection is a romp through the extensive mind of one of the founders of the fantasy genre, and the importance of his work cannot be overstated.
Lord Dunsany combines a fascination with the religions and myths of a broad range of cultures, demonstrating a surprisingly progressive respect for an author of his time period and social class for those cultures he visited. Combined with an acerbic sarcasm which becomes more and more prominent in his later work, and an irreverent attitude towards literary criticism, he has all the eccentric characteristics of a creative paradigm-shifting mind. It's incredibly hard to review the whole collection as the breadth of topic and style across these stories is an plural as the landscapes and cities he describes. But it is an enlightening read that compulsively pulls the reader into a colourful alternate dimension of sensations and parablistic messages. Quite an awesome legacy.
Excerpts from A Dreamer's Tales
The stories reviewed below all came from the same initial collection, and document creative and strikingly contemporary fantasy stories, many of which can be described as magical realism. Here Dunsany excels at applying new perspectives to mundane things, offering strange viewpoints or time-spans we don't often think about, or plain inserting the fantastical into the mundane. It's one of the best collections on offer.
Polternees, Beholder of the Ocean ****
This story is an iconic opening to a book about wonder, and the lure of the imagination. In a peaceful inland town, many young men are drawn away in search of the ocean which is mythical as no man who went in search of it has ever returned. Polternees goes to the sea with full intention of returning, in order to win the hand of a princess and prove she is more beautiful than this God-like unknowable ocean. But when he arrives, he is seduced not by the power or the beauty of the sea, but by a strange pathos of it. "and there were tears in the voice of the tyrannous Sea, for he had loved the galleons that he had overwhelmed, and he called men to him and all living things that he might make amends, because he had loved the bones that he had strewn afar." He never comes back. A fun exploration of wanderlust and escapism, and the spiritual properties of the unknown.
Blagadross ****
This piece of magical realism is whimsy worthy of C.S. Lewis. Set in a landfill site, broken and forgotten things speak their life stories under the descending twilight. One is a cork which once plugged a wine bottle, that cannot understand why it has been punished for its mis-service. "But they cast me away, me that had been sentinel for twenty years and just as staunch and strong as the day they made me." One is a cord that has hanged a depressed man and been thrown away in what it perceived to be an act of great benevolence. Dark. And last is Blagadross, the rocking horse destrier whose human owner became small-minded with age. "Blagadross in his wooden heart, exalted in the heat of battle" It's a very thought-provoking story, and one that would have fascinated me as a teenager, especially as a comment on our consumerist society.
The Madness of Andelspurz ***
The story of a beautiful fictional European city whose soul has gone mad and left the city after many years of occupation. The city's soul is seen wandering across the landscape, her eyes wild and her hair tousled beneath the cathedrals that hold it in place, before she leaves to be with the souls of other soulless cities, lost Athens and Atlantis. A very interesting concept.
The Tides that Ebb and Flow ***
Lotd Dunsany is evidently deeply disturbed by the idea of an eternal soul. Here, in a horrible first person narrative, the remains of a man who has committed an unspecified crime is left in the silt at the side of the Thames where the bones are repeatedly covered and exposed, covered and exposed, and not even the rats or the fungus will decompose them to give him rest. Every time the bones are in danger of drifting out to sea, men come and move them back so that the soul cannot be freed. "Finally the wild rose stood over mounds that had been wharves and warehouses." Eternal punishment, but on earth rather than in less concrete Hell.
Bethmoora ****
This tale of a mythical oasis city is more than a mystery, but an examination of the experiential loss that comes from being ignorant of other cultures. Here, the idyllic city is completely abandoned by the residents, but the chronicler cannot ever know why. "Those Europeans who were present and heard the message given were ignorant of the language" There is frustration at the loss created by language barriers, and comments on the roots of mysticism as a result of being unable to tell the mundane possibilities from the diabolical.
Idle Days on the Yann ***
This is one of Dunsany's classic tales of voyaging into the depths of the imagination, fabricating landscapes from the known and then embellishing them with paradoxes, extremes and conflicts. The author is being transported to the edge of the known world in a trade ship manned by those of many faiths and cultures naïve of European life. "I did not like to pray to a jealous God there where the affectionate God of the heathen were being invoked." This story is perhaps one of the most typical of Dunsany's work, complete with epic descriptions of vast plains reminiscent of Africa or South America, and dark twists, such as an enormous ivory gate made from a single piece of dropped ivory from a beast unseen but massively destructive. I have a sense that this is where the author is most happy, inventing for the sake of it. "my fancy is weakening as the years go by, and I go ever more seldom in the Land of Dreams."
The Sword and the Idol *****
A really fun short piece imagining the origins of human civilisation in the Iron Age. "That afternoon in the little encampment, just as the tribe moved on, the Stone Age passed away. It was not for many generations that another piece of iron ore was melted and the secret slowly guessed." There is a Darwinian slowness to developments, an accidental discovery underappreciated at the time, which Dunsany still manages to present as monumental. Even more fascinating is the response of vanished tribesmembers, who have to bow before the first sword-wielder. For one of these finds a tree in the wilderness that looks like a man, and speaks to it, until the villagers treat both man and idol as supernatural. It is a very interesting take on religion, as an outcast's creation which becomes for its very removal from society entoxicating and holy.
The Idle City ***
A story of a city whose entrance tax is one compelling story. The concept is given some pathos as these stories are depicted as essential for the mental health of the brooding king, whose people have dispensed with worthless money as a tax.
The Hashish Man ***
Slightly out of place in an otherwise relatively serious collection, this is an incredibly subversive tale. A guest at a dinner party tells Dunsany he has been to the fictional city of Bethmoora from one of Dunsany's other stories in the collection under the power of drugs and knows why it was abandoned. The man is quite mad and there is a strong implication that his hashish induced imaginative leaps come at a cost to his sanity.
Poor Old Bill ****
What I love most about this dark tale of cannibalism at sea is the structure of the narrative. A sailor begins telling a story in the third first person about a mutiny on a ship which the curse-wielding captain refused to allow back to dock. The munatous mates begin to kill and eat each other. They continue, the sailor amongst these remaining men, until only one is left and the first person narrative immediately takes a dive for the sinister. I am hoping to use a similar structure to resolve the infamous Gallant mystery in Cadenza IV.
The Beggars ***
To contrast the rest of Dunsany's scorn against the bleak city of London and all the industrialism he sees it as embodying, in this story noble beggars see beauty and virtue in the frim streets of a city and in ordinary people. It would make for a good set of Instagram quotes, but I am divided as to how tongue in cheek the author meant this.
Carcasonne ****
An interesting and cynical riff on the Grail quest of Arthurian legend. In a knightly court not at all dissimilar from Camelot, a king derisively hears the views of his seer. "'There are certain events upon the will of Fate that are concealed from the diviner's eyes, and many more that are clear to us but better veiled from all. Much that I know is better unforetold. This I will tell, that you will never come to Carcasonne." But the prophet, in hoping to reveal something only medial, has shaped the course of the future as the king becomes obsessed with defying Fate and reaching the city of Carcasonne. He and his aging, vagrant men become a byword for listlessness, feared in many places. This was one of my favourites. They never come to Carcasonne.
In Zaccarath **
One of the least memorable stories in the collection. Perhaps because it is so similar to others, the lords of splendid Zaccarath defy the gods by yearning to be an everlasting city. The author finds a few pieces of ruined stone written in their long-dead language.
The Field ***
Another quirky view on a very ordinary experience. The author escapes London for the countryside regularly, but is becoming increasingly creeped out by this certain small field. His poet friend tells him that it was once the site of a slaughter during battle.
The Day of the Poll **
A very sarcastic rebuttal of the importance of voting as all political parties are the same (in the author's eyes), and the populence generally don't understand what the economic issues they are voting on mean. This was well written, but I disagree with the sentiment that voting changes nothing, even if I understand the author's argument.
The Unhappy Body ****
I think this magical realism tale is perhaps the most entertaining and thought-provoking of all in this collection. I doubt this was the author's intention, but by sheer accident of originality he has hit upon a very identifyable dichotomy between mind and body experienced by many transgender people. "Why do you not dance and rejoice with us? they said to a certain body. And then the body made the confession of its troubles. It said, I have an evil soul." I would have loved this work to be explored further, but definitely one I will recommend in future.
Excerpts from
This book is one of the first collections of short fiction Lord Dunsany ever published. It outlines the same fictional gods and creation myths explored in Time and the Gods, but with some inconsistencies. Although there is less gentleness and splendour of sensory imagers here than in Time and the Gods, this entirely fictional set of creation myths are of great value as a ground-breaking new type of fiction. The book is structured like the Book of Genesis, told with statements in short passages resembling verses from the Old Testement. I love this use of real religious language in a fantasy setting.
The Gods of Pegana ***
Even gods have creators, and an end. "But at the Last Mana-Yood-Sushai will forger to rest, and will make new Gods and new worlds, and those that were will cease to exist."
Of Skarl the Drummer ***
But who keeps the God-maker asleep and inactive? A god drummer who will one day walk into oblivion, his work done.
Of the Making of the Worlds ***
There are many habitable planets, and Dunsany has allowed them to exist uninhabited for a billion years in line with evolution.
Of the Game of the Gods ***
But uninhabited worlds are boring. "And Kib said, 'This is life.' And the Gods said, 'If Kib has thus made beasts, he will in time make Men, and thus will endanger the secrets of the Gods.'" Even if humanity will coarsen the gods which grow to resemble their human creations. "making the sign of the Gods and speaking with their hands lest the silence of Pegana should blush"
The Saying of Kib ***
Kib created life, but he's not happy for it to do its own thing. His prayer is like a sales pitch.
Concerning Sish **
The wielder of the hound Time, not as interesting as anthropomorphised Time.
The Deeds of Mung ***
Death is very close on the heals of newly created life.
The Chaunt of the Priest **
They fear death, so they worship Mung.
The Sayings of Limpang-Tung ***
The little god of music, with little self-esteem despite the greatness of his work upon improving the quality of the lives of men.
Of Yoharneth-Lai ***
A God just for the creation of dreams? Only Lord Dunsany could have written this.
Of Roon, the God of Going ***
Equally Dunsany, a god of wonderlust.
The revolt of the home gods ****
There are lots of small immortal being on earth, in every hearth, in every river, on every doorstep. This is a very little interpretation of the plurality of the Greek gods. Three rivers grow vast and exert their godhood by drowning men and cities. "'We now play the game of gods and slay men for our pleasure, and we be greater than the gods of Pegana.'" Humanity appeals to the vanity of the Old Gods, and the rivers are quelled.
Of Dhorozand ***
There is a God of destiny, who knows more than the other gods. "And then shall the Gods be afraid when they see that Mana-Yood-Sushai knows they have made worlds while he rested. And the Gods shall say, 'Nay, the worlds came into existence by themselves.' Then Mana-Yood-Sushai, as one who would have done with an irksome matter, will wave his hand, and there will be Gods no more."
The Eye in the Waste ***
The gods exert their superiority over humanity by placing physical markers in inaccessible places on earth. They hide knowledge in real places.
Of the Thing that is neither God Nor Beast ****
In the emptiness of space is a book with all the future of the universe written on it. The pages are turned by a create which cannot read. Why couldn't it have been me? Read! "When it turneth a white page it is day and when it turneth a black page, it is night. And because the book says that there are gods - there are gods."
Yonath the Prophet ***
Part of an interesting series examining the requirements for being a religious and spiritual figure of power. "The Gods have set a brightness upon the farther side of Things to Come that they may appear more felicitous to men than the Things that Are." This man is revealed of the existence of the gods, the first and perhaps only true prophet.
Yug the Prophet ****
Once there is a prophet he must have successors. Yug tells the people what they want to hear.
Alhireth-Hotep the Propet ***
Alhireth-Hotep tells the people what they want to hear.
Kabok the Prophet ***
Kabok tells the people what they want to hear, and grows rich.
The Calamity that befell Yunn-Ilara ****
Men fear Mung and the death he brings, so they install a bold man to curse him. "'Shall a man curse a god?'" Mung does not intervene and allows the man to live under the pitiless shadow of age until he begs for death.
Of how the Gods whelmed Sideth **
Not particularly memorable. Humans are not permitted to worship the god-creator.
Of how Imbaum became high prophet ****
One of my favourite stories here. A new prophet, Imbaum is chosen because he is the only one who admits that he is ignorant and that he cannot see the ceiling of the temple for the smoke and fumes. He is a humanist, and many of his reported teachings are progressive and moving. "'And ever beside the way did men slaying men. And the sum of their slaying was far greater than the slaying of pestilence or of any of the evils of the gods.'" He is more a humanitarian than a prophet, but in his highly religious world, that is what he is cast as.
Of how Imbaun met Zodrak
Imbaum is granted a vision of a human shepherd who served the gods in Pegana as a fool. They allowed him spay over the human population below, and his own human errors brought greed and strife to humanity, not the gods. "'I will make men rich.' And the Gods said, 'What is rich?'" An interesting argument on culpability.
On Ood ***
Somewhere at the end of the world, men rest and worship the God-creator. The end is coming.
The River **
The Gods will mount a great galleon and sail away at the end of the universe. Inconsistent with the rest of the book, as the early stories state that the Gods will cease to exist which I find more satisfying somehow.
The Bird of Doom and the End ***
Like all creation stories across cultures, the world is charted until its very end. Death and Time will kill one another at the end. The bird sadly does not feature as more than a trumpeter.
This is one of the definitive collection of Lord Dunsany's genre-defining short fiction, including stories from his books Time and the Gods, The Sword of Welleran, The Book of Wonder, The Last Book of Wonder, A Dreamer's Tales, and The Gods of Pegana. I have reviewed the former four books separately, but will give an overview of the stories selected from the latter two for this collection below. Overall, this collection is a romp through the extensive mind of one of the founders of the fantasy genre, and the importance of his work cannot be overstated.
Lord Dunsany combines a fascination with the religions and myths of a broad range of cultures, demonstrating a surprisingly progressive respect for an author of his time period and social class for those cultures he visited. Combined with an acerbic sarcasm which becomes more and more prominent in his later work, and an irreverent attitude towards literary criticism, he has all the eccentric characteristics of a creative paradigm-shifting mind. It's incredibly hard to review the whole collection as the breadth of topic and style across these stories is an plural as the landscapes and cities he describes. But it is an enlightening read that compulsively pulls the reader into a colourful alternate dimension of sensations and parablistic messages. Quite an awesome legacy.
Excerpts from A Dreamer's Tales
The stories reviewed below all came from the same initial collection, and document creative and strikingly contemporary fantasy stories, many of which can be described as magical realism. Here Dunsany excels at applying new perspectives to mundane things, offering strange viewpoints or time-spans we don't often think about, or plain inserting the fantastical into the mundane. It's one of the best collections on offer.
Polternees, Beholder of the Ocean ****
This story is an iconic opening to a book about wonder, and the lure of the imagination. In a peaceful inland town, many young men are drawn away in search of the ocean which is mythical as no man who went in search of it has ever returned. Polternees goes to the sea with full intention of returning, in order to win the hand of a princess and prove she is more beautiful than this God-like unknowable ocean. But when he arrives, he is seduced not by the power or the beauty of the sea, but by a strange pathos of it. "and there were tears in the voice of the tyrannous Sea, for he had loved the galleons that he had overwhelmed, and he called men to him and all living things that he might make amends, because he had loved the bones that he had strewn afar." He never comes back. A fun exploration of wanderlust and escapism, and the spiritual properties of the unknown.
Blagadross ****
This piece of magical realism is whimsy worthy of C.S. Lewis. Set in a landfill site, broken and forgotten things speak their life stories under the descending twilight. One is a cork which once plugged a wine bottle, that cannot understand why it has been punished for its mis-service. "But they cast me away, me that had been sentinel for twenty years and just as staunch and strong as the day they made me." One is a cord that has hanged a depressed man and been thrown away in what it perceived to be an act of great benevolence. Dark. And last is Blagadross, the rocking horse destrier whose human owner became small-minded with age. "Blagadross in his wooden heart, exalted in the heat of battle" It's a very thought-provoking story, and one that would have fascinated me as a teenager, especially as a comment on our consumerist society.
The Madness of Andelspurz ***
The story of a beautiful fictional European city whose soul has gone mad and left the city after many years of occupation. The city's soul is seen wandering across the landscape, her eyes wild and her hair tousled beneath the cathedrals that hold it in place, before she leaves to be with the souls of other soulless cities, lost Athens and Atlantis. A very interesting concept.
The Tides that Ebb and Flow ***
Lotd Dunsany is evidently deeply disturbed by the idea of an eternal soul. Here, in a horrible first person narrative, the remains of a man who has committed an unspecified crime is left in the silt at the side of the Thames where the bones are repeatedly covered and exposed, covered and exposed, and not even the rats or the fungus will decompose them to give him rest. Every time the bones are in danger of drifting out to sea, men come and move them back so that the soul cannot be freed. "Finally the wild rose stood over mounds that had been wharves and warehouses." Eternal punishment, but on earth rather than in less concrete Hell.
Bethmoora ****
This tale of a mythical oasis city is more than a mystery, but an examination of the experiential loss that comes from being ignorant of other cultures. Here, the idyllic city is completely abandoned by the residents, but the chronicler cannot ever know why. "Those Europeans who were present and heard the message given were ignorant of the language" There is frustration at the loss created by language barriers, and comments on the roots of mysticism as a result of being unable to tell the mundane possibilities from the diabolical.
Idle Days on the Yann ***
This is one of Dunsany's classic tales of voyaging into the depths of the imagination, fabricating landscapes from the known and then embellishing them with paradoxes, extremes and conflicts. The author is being transported to the edge of the known world in a trade ship manned by those of many faiths and cultures naïve of European life. "I did not like to pray to a jealous God there where the affectionate God of the heathen were being invoked." This story is perhaps one of the most typical of Dunsany's work, complete with epic descriptions of vast plains reminiscent of Africa or South America, and dark twists, such as an enormous ivory gate made from a single piece of dropped ivory from a beast unseen but massively destructive. I have a sense that this is where the author is most happy, inventing for the sake of it. "my fancy is weakening as the years go by, and I go ever more seldom in the Land of Dreams."
The Sword and the Idol *****
A really fun short piece imagining the origins of human civilisation in the Iron Age. "That afternoon in the little encampment, just as the tribe moved on, the Stone Age passed away. It was not for many generations that another piece of iron ore was melted and the secret slowly guessed." There is a Darwinian slowness to developments, an accidental discovery underappreciated at the time, which Dunsany still manages to present as monumental. Even more fascinating is the response of vanished tribesmembers, who have to bow before the first sword-wielder. For one of these finds a tree in the wilderness that looks like a man, and speaks to it, until the villagers treat both man and idol as supernatural. It is a very interesting take on religion, as an outcast's creation which becomes for its very removal from society entoxicating and holy.
The Idle City ***
A story of a city whose entrance tax is one compelling story. The concept is given some pathos as these stories are depicted as essential for the mental health of the brooding king, whose people have dispensed with worthless money as a tax.
The Hashish Man ***
Slightly out of place in an otherwise relatively serious collection, this is an incredibly subversive tale. A guest at a dinner party tells Dunsany he has been to the fictional city of Bethmoora from one of Dunsany's other stories in the collection under the power of drugs and knows why it was abandoned. The man is quite mad and there is a strong implication that his hashish induced imaginative leaps come at a cost to his sanity.
Poor Old Bill ****
What I love most about this dark tale of cannibalism at sea is the structure of the narrative. A sailor begins telling a story in the third first person about a mutiny on a ship which the curse-wielding captain refused to allow back to dock. The munatous mates begin to kill and eat each other. They continue, the sailor amongst these remaining men, until only one is left and the first person narrative immediately takes a dive for the sinister. I am hoping to use a similar structure to resolve the infamous Gallant mystery in Cadenza IV.
The Beggars ***
To contrast the rest of Dunsany's scorn against the bleak city of London and all the industrialism he sees it as embodying, in this story noble beggars see beauty and virtue in the frim streets of a city and in ordinary people. It would make for a good set of Instagram quotes, but I am divided as to how tongue in cheek the author meant this.
Carcasonne ****
An interesting and cynical riff on the Grail quest of Arthurian legend. In a knightly court not at all dissimilar from Camelot, a king derisively hears the views of his seer. "'There are certain events upon the will of Fate that are concealed from the diviner's eyes, and many more that are clear to us but better veiled from all. Much that I know is better unforetold. This I will tell, that you will never come to Carcasonne." But the prophet, in hoping to reveal something only medial, has shaped the course of the future as the king becomes obsessed with defying Fate and reaching the city of Carcasonne. He and his aging, vagrant men become a byword for listlessness, feared in many places. This was one of my favourites. They never come to Carcasonne.
In Zaccarath **
One of the least memorable stories in the collection. Perhaps because it is so similar to others, the lords of splendid Zaccarath defy the gods by yearning to be an everlasting city. The author finds a few pieces of ruined stone written in their long-dead language.
The Field ***
Another quirky view on a very ordinary experience. The author escapes London for the countryside regularly, but is becoming increasingly creeped out by this certain small field. His poet friend tells him that it was once the site of a slaughter during battle.
The Day of the Poll **
A very sarcastic rebuttal of the importance of voting as all political parties are the same (in the author's eyes), and the populence generally don't understand what the economic issues they are voting on mean. This was well written, but I disagree with the sentiment that voting changes nothing, even if I understand the author's argument.
The Unhappy Body ****
I think this magical realism tale is perhaps the most entertaining and thought-provoking of all in this collection. I doubt this was the author's intention, but by sheer accident of originality he has hit upon a very identifyable dichotomy between mind and body experienced by many transgender people. "Why do you not dance and rejoice with us? they said to a certain body. And then the body made the confession of its troubles. It said, I have an evil soul." I would have loved this work to be explored further, but definitely one I will recommend in future.
Excerpts from
This book is one of the first collections of short fiction Lord Dunsany ever published. It outlines the same fictional gods and creation myths explored in Time and the Gods, but with some inconsistencies. Although there is less gentleness and splendour of sensory imagers here than in Time and the Gods, this entirely fictional set of creation myths are of great value as a ground-breaking new type of fiction. The book is structured like the Book of Genesis, told with statements in short passages resembling verses from the Old Testement. I love this use of real religious language in a fantasy setting.
The Gods of Pegana ***
Even gods have creators, and an end. "But at the Last Mana-Yood-Sushai will forger to rest, and will make new Gods and new worlds, and those that were will cease to exist."
Of Skarl the Drummer ***
But who keeps the God-maker asleep and inactive? A god drummer who will one day walk into oblivion, his work done.
Of the Making of the Worlds ***
There are many habitable planets, and Dunsany has allowed them to exist uninhabited for a billion years in line with evolution.
Of the Game of the Gods ***
But uninhabited worlds are boring. "And Kib said, 'This is life.' And the Gods said, 'If Kib has thus made beasts, he will in time make Men, and thus will endanger the secrets of the Gods.'" Even if humanity will coarsen the gods which grow to resemble their human creations. "making the sign of the Gods and speaking with their hands lest the silence of Pegana should blush"
The Saying of Kib ***
Kib created life, but he's not happy for it to do its own thing. His prayer is like a sales pitch.
Concerning Sish **
The wielder of the hound Time, not as interesting as anthropomorphised Time.
The Deeds of Mung ***
Death is very close on the heals of newly created life.
The Chaunt of the Priest **
They fear death, so they worship Mung.
The Sayings of Limpang-Tung ***
The little god of music, with little self-esteem despite the greatness of his work upon improving the quality of the lives of men.
Of Yoharneth-Lai ***
A God just for the creation of dreams? Only Lord Dunsany could have written this.
Of Roon, the God of Going ***
Equally Dunsany, a god of wonderlust.
The revolt of the home gods ****
There are lots of small immortal being on earth, in every hearth, in every river, on every doorstep. This is a very little interpretation of the plurality of the Greek gods. Three rivers grow vast and exert their godhood by drowning men and cities. "'We now play the game of gods and slay men for our pleasure, and we be greater than the gods of Pegana.'" Humanity appeals to the vanity of the Old Gods, and the rivers are quelled.
Of Dhorozand ***
There is a God of destiny, who knows more than the other gods. "And then shall the Gods be afraid when they see that Mana-Yood-Sushai knows they have made worlds while he rested. And the Gods shall say, 'Nay, the worlds came into existence by themselves.' Then Mana-Yood-Sushai, as one who would have done with an irksome matter, will wave his hand, and there will be Gods no more."
The Eye in the Waste ***
The gods exert their superiority over humanity by placing physical markers in inaccessible places on earth. They hide knowledge in real places.
Of the Thing that is neither God Nor Beast ****
In the emptiness of space is a book with all the future of the universe written on it. The pages are turned by a create which cannot read. Why couldn't it have been me? Read! "When it turneth a white page it is day and when it turneth a black page, it is night. And because the book says that there are gods - there are gods."
Yonath the Prophet ***
Part of an interesting series examining the requirements for being a religious and spiritual figure of power. "The Gods have set a brightness upon the farther side of Things to Come that they may appear more felicitous to men than the Things that Are." This man is revealed of the existence of the gods, the first and perhaps only true prophet.
Yug the Prophet ****
Once there is a prophet he must have successors. Yug tells the people what they want to hear.
Alhireth-Hotep the Propet ***
Alhireth-Hotep tells the people what they want to hear.
Kabok the Prophet ***
Kabok tells the people what they want to hear, and grows rich.
The Calamity that befell Yunn-Ilara ****
Men fear Mung and the death he brings, so they install a bold man to curse him. "'Shall a man curse a god?'" Mung does not intervene and allows the man to live under the pitiless shadow of age until he begs for death.
Of how the Gods whelmed Sideth **
Not particularly memorable. Humans are not permitted to worship the god-creator.
Of how Imbaum became high prophet ****
One of my favourite stories here. A new prophet, Imbaum is chosen because he is the only one who admits that he is ignorant and that he cannot see the ceiling of the temple for the smoke and fumes. He is a humanist, and many of his reported teachings are progressive and moving. "'And ever beside the way did men slaying men. And the sum of their slaying was far greater than the slaying of pestilence or of any of the evils of the gods.'" He is more a humanitarian than a prophet, but in his highly religious world, that is what he is cast as.
Of how Imbaun met Zodrak
Imbaum is granted a vision of a human shepherd who served the gods in Pegana as a fool. They allowed him spay over the human population below, and his own human errors brought greed and strife to humanity, not the gods. "'I will make men rich.' And the Gods said, 'What is rich?'" An interesting argument on culpability.
On Ood ***
Somewhere at the end of the world, men rest and worship the God-creator. The end is coming.
The River **
The Gods will mount a great galleon and sail away at the end of the universe. Inconsistent with the rest of the book, as the early stories state that the Gods will cease to exist which I find more satisfying somehow.
The Bird of Doom and the End ***
Like all creation stories across cultures, the world is charted until its very end. Death and Time will kill one another at the end. The bird sadly does not feature as more than a trumpeter.
May 30, 2025
Time and the Gods is a piece of mythopoeia, a narrative genre where the author creates a fictionalized mythology. Call it “artificial mythology,” though the word mythopoeia had not been applied to such works at the time that Dunsany was writing. Time and the Gods is actually Dunsany’s second book, after The Gods of Pegana, which was self-published. The books are companions, published back-to-back in 1905 & 1906. Both books include 30+ short stories that read like myths and legends of the gods (and occasional heroes) of the invented world of Pegana. Honestly, it reads more like some ancient Greek text rather than a piece of modern literature. I got echoes of Hesiod’s Work and Days.
You can read more about my thoughts on where Time and the Gods fits into the history of fantasy literature at Something About Dragons: https://somethingaboutdrag.wixsite.co...
You can read more about my thoughts on where Time and the Gods fits into the history of fantasy literature at Something About Dragons: https://somethingaboutdrag.wixsite.co...
January 10, 2018
Decent print editions of Lord Dunsany are sadly hard to come by (albeit Delphi Classics has, as of late 2017, released a comprehensive ebook collection). Thankfully, there is at least this, only the second ever release in the now-venerable Fantasy Masterworks range. 'Time and the Gods' is something of a misnomer, as it's actually an omnibus of six of Dunsany's collections of short fantasy fiction originally published from 1905 to 1916 (comprising all his early work other than 'Fifty-One Tales' a.k.a. 'The Food of Death', which I also own).
The first and titular collection could be off-putting to new readers, as it is written in an especially archaic style of Biblical-influenced parables with a mythopoeic quality. The second collection, The Sword of Welleran, would be the better starting point for general readers as, whilst not wholly dissimilar, it mixes in more modern writing with a diversity of fully-formed and self-contained stories compared to the vignette-like quality of the first.
The story 'The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth' in particular reads as a precursor to pulp sword and sorcery, with the style and tone being an evolutionary midway point between his parabolic material and the more action-packed descriptiveness of Conan and Jirel.
It should not be imagined though that this is all straightforward, if stylistically dated, fantasy. At times Dunsany crafted some surprisingly odd stories with absurd and/or abstract ideas. Several of them involve ghosts or pirates, but not in any traditional or expected manner.
The Bureau d'Echange de Maux is the strangest of all, and were it released today would undoubtedly be embraced as 'weird fiction', being about a shop wherein people can trade each other's 'evils' (such as a vice or fear) by mutual agreement and by paying the fees of the proprietor. In fact 'The Last Book of Wonder' (a.k.a. 'Tales of Wonder') has a high concentration of such weird stories.
Then there's the amusing oddity of 'The Loot of Bombasharna' and its sequel 'A Story of Land and Sea', unconventional swashbucklers about a pirate captain who turns an island into a sailing ship, and puts wheels on a sailing ship to cross Africa. In these and other tales, Dunsany's ability to imagine something I genuinely haven't seen before (however preposterous) is a commendable tonic for jadedness.
It's difficult at times to comprehend the broader world in which the stories are set, but this is something to which a modern reader ascribes importance that Dunsany did not. Often he'll use a heap of fantasy names and elements (yes, even dragons) and yet reference real-world locations as well as God, Satan, and sin within the same narrative. This is understandable within the dream settings of 'A Dreamer's Tale' (which proved influential on HPL's 'Dream Cycle') but rather muddier elsewhere. Hence one must simply 'go with it' as they say.
Putting 'The Gods of Pegana' at the end is a strange choice by the publishers, as it was the earliest of these collections and shares much of its setting and style with Time and the Gods. My perception is it was a simpler and lighter read than its sequel, though I could be biased through the increased familiarity with his style I'd gained by that point.
Star ratings and summarising comments are necessarily too reductive for such a wide-ranging omnibus as this. Nonetheless, be it for its imagination, its influence, its beautiful prose, it's uncommonly skilled use of metaphor and embodiment of the abstract, its economically-crafted short stories or the ambition and success of its attempt to build a mythological pantheon of Gods for a fictional world, I cannot but consider this a five-star favourite.
The first and titular collection could be off-putting to new readers, as it is written in an especially archaic style of Biblical-influenced parables with a mythopoeic quality. The second collection, The Sword of Welleran, would be the better starting point for general readers as, whilst not wholly dissimilar, it mixes in more modern writing with a diversity of fully-formed and self-contained stories compared to the vignette-like quality of the first.
The story 'The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth' in particular reads as a precursor to pulp sword and sorcery, with the style and tone being an evolutionary midway point between his parabolic material and the more action-packed descriptiveness of Conan and Jirel.
It should not be imagined though that this is all straightforward, if stylistically dated, fantasy. At times Dunsany crafted some surprisingly odd stories with absurd and/or abstract ideas. Several of them involve ghosts or pirates, but not in any traditional or expected manner.
The Bureau d'Echange de Maux is the strangest of all, and were it released today would undoubtedly be embraced as 'weird fiction', being about a shop wherein people can trade each other's 'evils' (such as a vice or fear) by mutual agreement and by paying the fees of the proprietor. In fact 'The Last Book of Wonder' (a.k.a. 'Tales of Wonder') has a high concentration of such weird stories.
Then there's the amusing oddity of 'The Loot of Bombasharna' and its sequel 'A Story of Land and Sea', unconventional swashbucklers about a pirate captain who turns an island into a sailing ship, and puts wheels on a sailing ship to cross Africa. In these and other tales, Dunsany's ability to imagine something I genuinely haven't seen before (however preposterous) is a commendable tonic for jadedness.
It's difficult at times to comprehend the broader world in which the stories are set, but this is something to which a modern reader ascribes importance that Dunsany did not. Often he'll use a heap of fantasy names and elements (yes, even dragons) and yet reference real-world locations as well as God, Satan, and sin within the same narrative. This is understandable within the dream settings of 'A Dreamer's Tale' (which proved influential on HPL's 'Dream Cycle') but rather muddier elsewhere. Hence one must simply 'go with it' as they say.
Putting 'The Gods of Pegana' at the end is a strange choice by the publishers, as it was the earliest of these collections and shares much of its setting and style with Time and the Gods. My perception is it was a simpler and lighter read than its sequel, though I could be biased through the increased familiarity with his style I'd gained by that point.
Star ratings and summarising comments are necessarily too reductive for such a wide-ranging omnibus as this. Nonetheless, be it for its imagination, its influence, its beautiful prose, it's uncommonly skilled use of metaphor and embodiment of the abstract, its economically-crafted short stories or the ambition and success of its attempt to build a mythological pantheon of Gods for a fictional world, I cannot but consider this a five-star favourite.
July 26, 2021
Part of the Fantasy Masterworks series, this book is actually a collection of collections of stories, made up of six previously published books (including the titular 'Time and the Gods').
Aside from a short story I'd read previously (which is included here actually), this was my first real foray into the writing of Lord Dunsany, who is often spoken of in the same breath as J. R. R. Tolkien as breaking the ground for what we now consider the fantasy genre.
These stories, written mostly in the first decade of the 20th Century, certainly were revolutionary in the telling of fairy tales for adults, by framing them with a depth and melancholy that the earlier children's stories lacked.
In short, I totally get why Lord Dunsany is regarded as a pioneer in the genre.
All of that doesn't change the fact that this book was unfathomably tedious to read.
Large parts of the book are about the gods of Pegana and whilst I was initially enjoying the fable-like nature of the storytelling, I soon became thoroughly bored by the repetition and by the increasingly ridiculous made-up place names. "Blog was the god of the city of Wiggly-Woo and his prophet was Authron Bifftang..." (I have just made that one up, but it gives you a sense of what you'll find here). Added to that is a deliberately obtuse use of archaic language filled, often in a single interminable sentence, with 'Thee, Thou, Thine' etcetera.
Basically, reading this book rapidly became a chore and, were it not for my steadfast refusal not to put aside any book I start reading, I wouldn't have bothered continuing past the first quarter.
Somewhat frustratingly, there are some really, really good stories here too.
In particular, about halfway through, we get a string of far shorter stories which have more art and narrative punch than anything in the long, drawn-out tales. Genuinely this book features some of the finest short stories in the fantasy genre but they are just sandwiched between and buried beneath an absolute torrent of tedious dross.
I'm well-aware that there are stuck-up fantasy purists who will want to burn me at the stake for such heresy, but I would recommend against reading this book cover to cover.
If you're going to read it at all, perhaps dip in an out with a short story here and there, from time to time, instead of taking the torturous long-route through its pages that I did.
* More reviews here: https://fsfh-book-review2.webnode.com *
Aside from a short story I'd read previously (which is included here actually), this was my first real foray into the writing of Lord Dunsany, who is often spoken of in the same breath as J. R. R. Tolkien as breaking the ground for what we now consider the fantasy genre.
These stories, written mostly in the first decade of the 20th Century, certainly were revolutionary in the telling of fairy tales for adults, by framing them with a depth and melancholy that the earlier children's stories lacked.
In short, I totally get why Lord Dunsany is regarded as a pioneer in the genre.
All of that doesn't change the fact that this book was unfathomably tedious to read.
Large parts of the book are about the gods of Pegana and whilst I was initially enjoying the fable-like nature of the storytelling, I soon became thoroughly bored by the repetition and by the increasingly ridiculous made-up place names. "Blog was the god of the city of Wiggly-Woo and his prophet was Authron Bifftang..." (I have just made that one up, but it gives you a sense of what you'll find here). Added to that is a deliberately obtuse use of archaic language filled, often in a single interminable sentence, with 'Thee, Thou, Thine' etcetera.
Basically, reading this book rapidly became a chore and, were it not for my steadfast refusal not to put aside any book I start reading, I wouldn't have bothered continuing past the first quarter.
Somewhat frustratingly, there are some really, really good stories here too.
In particular, about halfway through, we get a string of far shorter stories which have more art and narrative punch than anything in the long, drawn-out tales. Genuinely this book features some of the finest short stories in the fantasy genre but they are just sandwiched between and buried beneath an absolute torrent of tedious dross.
I'm well-aware that there are stuck-up fantasy purists who will want to burn me at the stake for such heresy, but I would recommend against reading this book cover to cover.
If you're going to read it at all, perhaps dip in an out with a short story here and there, from time to time, instead of taking the torturous long-route through its pages that I did.
* More reviews here: https://fsfh-book-review2.webnode.com *
March 29, 2022
Having previously read 'The King of Elfland's Daughter' and 'The Charwoman's Shadow', both of which I thought were superb pre-Tolkien fantasy, I was very keen for a deep dive into a treasury of Dunsany short stories. I fear, however, if this collection (of collections) is anything to go by, his strength lay moreso in the long story format, which is less so the case than usual.
Don't get me wrong, there are some stellar stories in this collection. And Dunsany has crafted tales from dreams and the realm of Fairie and the Gods of his imagination. It is very evident where (and why) Lovecraft was a huge fan. Perhaps I should have put down the book after the completion of each 'collection' (this volume collects 6 collections of Dunsany short stories) to better digest each volume, and give myself a short break from Dunsany's stories.
At the beginning (in the collection 'Time and the Gods') and towards the end (in the final collection 'The Gods of Pegana'), I was a bit over the relentless mention of god after god after god. It was very likely groundbreaking at the time, and I could imagine it's possible influence on Tolkien's world building. Whereas 'The Silmarillion' held together for me, and I will gladly re-read it every few years of so, the same cohesiveness and roundedness of a body of work like 'The Silmarillion' (and credit is due as much to Christopher Tolkien and Guy Gavriel Kay for their efforts in condensing Tolkien's work to such a gem), Dunsany's collections of stories in that area didn't hold as much interest for me. And yes, likely unfair of me to compare, but from this side of both publications it is difficult for me to avoid.
A large part, perhaps, were the names he came up with, which jarred for me, particularly in 'The Gods of Pegana', where they struck me as just sounding too odd? Not enough gravitas? Lacking in something at any rate.
A re-read on my part, if only to pluck out the gems that Dunsany was capable of in short story format, might be on the cards down the track, but I believe that at least for the forseeable future, my returns to Dunsany will more likely be in the novel format.
Don't get me wrong, there are some stellar stories in this collection. And Dunsany has crafted tales from dreams and the realm of Fairie and the Gods of his imagination. It is very evident where (and why) Lovecraft was a huge fan. Perhaps I should have put down the book after the completion of each 'collection' (this volume collects 6 collections of Dunsany short stories) to better digest each volume, and give myself a short break from Dunsany's stories.
At the beginning (in the collection 'Time and the Gods') and towards the end (in the final collection 'The Gods of Pegana'), I was a bit over the relentless mention of god after god after god. It was very likely groundbreaking at the time, and I could imagine it's possible influence on Tolkien's world building. Whereas 'The Silmarillion' held together for me, and I will gladly re-read it every few years of so, the same cohesiveness and roundedness of a body of work like 'The Silmarillion' (and credit is due as much to Christopher Tolkien and Guy Gavriel Kay for their efforts in condensing Tolkien's work to such a gem), Dunsany's collections of stories in that area didn't hold as much interest for me. And yes, likely unfair of me to compare, but from this side of both publications it is difficult for me to avoid.
A large part, perhaps, were the names he came up with, which jarred for me, particularly in 'The Gods of Pegana', where they struck me as just sounding too odd? Not enough gravitas? Lacking in something at any rate.
A re-read on my part, if only to pluck out the gems that Dunsany was capable of in short story format, might be on the cards down the track, but I believe that at least for the forseeable future, my returns to Dunsany will more likely be in the novel format.
July 3, 2023
Primera adquisición en la Feria del Libro de Madrid de este año. Mi intención primordial al comprarlo era entender su influencia sobre la obra de H.P. Lovecraft, ya que probablemente sea el autor al que más referencias hizo este en sus cartas y sus ensayos, llegando a atender una conferencia que dio en Boston.
Lo que he encontrado ha sido, con un par de excepciones, historias extrañas en un estilo muy similar a las de Ambrose Bierce (que pudiera haber sido una influencia sobre el autor), pero influidas por las cosmogonías europeas irlandesas y clásicas, mientras las de aquel tenían una clara influencia norteamericana.
A mis ojos, aunque entendiendo su valor, han podido envejecer un poco mal y son material digno de degustación lenta y tranquila, más de estudio que de disfrute hedonista. En su favor juega que la mayoría de los relatos no ocupen más de tres páginas, pero los largos requieren más dedicación y entornos tranquilos.
Sé que esto último, expresado así, parece una tristeza, pero la subjetividad me obliga a decir que a mi cerebro cada día le cuestan más estos formatos, sofronizado como está con el mundo moderno.
Lo que he encontrado ha sido, con un par de excepciones, historias extrañas en un estilo muy similar a las de Ambrose Bierce (que pudiera haber sido una influencia sobre el autor), pero influidas por las cosmogonías europeas irlandesas y clásicas, mientras las de aquel tenían una clara influencia norteamericana.
A mis ojos, aunque entendiendo su valor, han podido envejecer un poco mal y son material digno de degustación lenta y tranquila, más de estudio que de disfrute hedonista. En su favor juega que la mayoría de los relatos no ocupen más de tres páginas, pero los largos requieren más dedicación y entornos tranquilos.
Sé que esto último, expresado así, parece una tristeza, pero la subjetividad me obliga a decir que a mi cerebro cada día le cuestan más estos formatos, sofronizado como está con el mundo moderno.
December 9, 2011
Then along the torchlit corridors the King went to his chamber, and having shut the door in the empty room, beheld suddenly a figure wearing the cloak of a prophet; and the King perceived that it was he whose face was hidden at the banquet, who had not revealed his name.
And the King said:
'Art thou, too, a prophet?'
And the figure answered:
'I am a prophet.'
And the King said: 'Knowest thou aught concerning the journey of the King?' And the figure answered: 'I know, but have never said.'
And the King said: 'Who art thou that knowest so much and hast not told it?'
And he answered:
'I am THE END.'
Then the cloaked figure strode away from the palace, and the King, unseen by the guards, followed upon his journey.
The book "Time and the Gods" in the Fantasy Masterworks series contains six collections of Lord Dunsany's short stories. I have just finished the first of them, which is also called "Time and the Gods". The stories were more like mythology than fantasy, having quite a detached air about them, and more atmosphere than plot.
And the King said:
'Art thou, too, a prophet?'
And the figure answered:
'I am a prophet.'
And the King said: 'Knowest thou aught concerning the journey of the King?' And the figure answered: 'I know, but have never said.'
And the King said: 'Who art thou that knowest so much and hast not told it?'
And he answered:
'I am THE END.'
Then the cloaked figure strode away from the palace, and the King, unseen by the guards, followed upon his journey.
The book "Time and the Gods" in the Fantasy Masterworks series contains six collections of Lord Dunsany's short stories. I have just finished the first of them, which is also called "Time and the Gods". The stories were more like mythology than fantasy, having quite a detached air about them, and more atmosphere than plot.
November 10, 2021
Curious, curt, and cozy little tales of pirates and sailors, gods and idolators, warriors, wanderers, and wonders, sorcerers and dragons, and ordinary men glimpsing wondersome dreams. Enchanting journeys through distant majestic lands inhabited by men valorous or vile, haunted or sheltered by magical beasts, ruled over by great and revered deities. Expeditions to the exotic East, or sails across treacherous seas, or a trip to the heart of an old English tavern, wherein lies hidden a strange ancient secret ripe for the reveal. Fables often with bittersweet outcomes or mortal consequences, but never without the apt finesse and grace, interweaved seamlessly to evoke an ephemeral vision through ornate prose. Read on wintry nights sitting snugly in your favorite couch in front of the crackling fire, hot beverage at arm's length; or, if the weather allows, peruse out on a sunlit porch facing the fragrant verdure, and glance up at times, get lost in the lushes of nature every few pages, thinking, beyond this grove or forest or field or whatever may lie ahead, the land of dreams await.
September 27, 2020
This omnibus is the best bet for the Dunsany completionist on a budget. Although I resent the fact that the Gods of Pegana is tucked away at the back, like they are ashamed of it, as I believe it is the best Dunsany work. So start at the end and circle around to the front.
The downside: this edition is in plain text and leaves out Dunsany’s exotic punctuation which is retained in the Penguin collection. Also no Sydney Sime illustrations which I believe are at least 50% of the magic. If Dunsany found them to be crucial and his original readers got them and fell in love with them, then why must they be left out of almost all modern reprints?
The upside: Reading this will bring you halfway through Dunsany’s notable fantasies, although my personal opinion is that the two tales of wonder are not worth it.
The downside: this edition is in plain text and leaves out Dunsany’s exotic punctuation which is retained in the Penguin collection. Also no Sydney Sime illustrations which I believe are at least 50% of the magic. If Dunsany found them to be crucial and his original readers got them and fell in love with them, then why must they be left out of almost all modern reprints?
The upside: Reading this will bring you halfway through Dunsany’s notable fantasies, although my personal opinion is that the two tales of wonder are not worth it.
June 16, 2008
This is hands down my favorite collection of short stories. It is presented in chronological order, except for "The Gods of Pegana", which though his first work, is presented last.
Dunsany isn't someone I would call an "acquired taste", but he isn't for everybody. Many of his stories are evocative of the King James Bible in language. No other author has had me have to pause just to fully absorb what I have read.
"Chu-bu and Sheemish" and "The Coronation of Mr. Thomas Shap" are particular high points.
Dunsany isn't someone I would call an "acquired taste", but he isn't for everybody. Many of his stories are evocative of the King James Bible in language. No other author has had me have to pause just to fully absorb what I have read.
"Chu-bu and Sheemish" and "The Coronation of Mr. Thomas Shap" are particular high points.
April 30, 2021
He was indeed a Master of Fantasy. I read it through and through. Remember he was a man from the 19th Century, yet nothing restrained his thought - he even wrote stories about parallel universes (or something quite similar to the idea). He wrote about lucid dreaming, driving through the Sahara desert with a ship on wheels (!), about three sailors that became Chess-masters - I can go on and on. But what stayed with the most, beyond his imaginative force, was his hope (or certainty) that the world does not limit itself to what we see with our (human) eyes. Something wonderful to read - indeed!
April 17, 2022
It might had been brilliant in its own time, but not today. I usually read a book in a week, it took me more than 1,5 months, that says already enough. It‘s a collection of short stories, none of them are great, some are just bad. It‘s not an engaging book, most of the stories I can‘t recall at all anymore having just finished the book today.
February 12, 2010
It's worth giving it a shot for the good stories, but be warned there's plenty here that will bore you the same way Tolkien's Silmarillion can, except this isn't put together as well as the Silmarillion.
July 27, 2011
Not my cup of tea. I made it through about 100 pages before deciding life was too short to read a book I'm not loving. It's actually pretty good for what it is, but it's not my style. I didn't like Lovecraft either when I tried reading him so I guess this style of fantasy writing isn't for me.
January 28, 2024
Cuentos cortos, muchos de ellos una total ida de olla pero entretenidos, se dejan leer con agrado y si alguno no te gusta su pequeña longitud no es problema para terminarlo. Mis favoritos han sido los libros de los Prodigios.
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