\nThe Forgotten Beasts of Eld<\/i> is an adult fairy tale, reminiscent of Stardust<\/i> (or rather the other way round, since this was written in 1974).\n<\/p>\n
\nA wizard lives in an isolated castle on top of a mountain. With his mind, he calls great mythical beasts to himself, and binds them to live with him. At one point he also calls a woman, who bears him a daughter and then dies. The daughter, Sybel, grows up and continues in the same vein: living in isolation, with only beasts such as a riddling boar and an intelligent lion for company.\n<\/p>\n
\nSybel is happy on her own, but when she becomes the carer for a princeling, she is – inevitably and mostly against her will – drawn into the affairs of ordinary humans. She is beautiful and powerful, and men would love to possess her for both of these.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe book is beautifully written, with a lyrical, dreamlike language. Deep and quiet and yet fast-flowing. It feels ancient, as if it was a fairy tale. While it has its share of standard fantasy elements – sorceresses and warring kings and talking animals – it uses them in a refreshingly different way. There are no grand quests, no kingdoms to save, no dragons to kill. There are just human relationships.\n<\/p>\n
\nTo use a tired cliche, it’s a jewel of a book: small and simple, and yet sparklingly, preciously beautiful.\n<\/p>\n
\nAmazon UK<\/a>, Amazon US<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Forgotten Beasts of Eld is an adult fairy tale, reminiscent of Stardust (or rather the other way round, since this was written in 1974). A wizard lives in an isolated castle on top of a mountain. With his mind, he calls great mythical beasts to himself, and binds them to live with him. At […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[77,80,183,81],"class_list":["post-863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-book_review","tag-fiction","tag-patricia_mckillip","tag-sff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=863"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10533,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863\/revisions\/10533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}