The King of Elfland's Daughter - Reading Appendix N
This year I wanted to read more books, and by more books - I specifically want to read books that inspired Dungeons & Dragons. Luckily, Gary Gygax was thoughtful enough to leave behind a long list of books and authors that inspired him in the Appendix N found in the first Dungeon Master’s Guide in 1979. (To make some of you feel old, that was only 44 years ago.)
This month, we read The King of Elfland’s Daughter by Lord Dunsany published in 1924 - almost 100 years ago. It is a well-regarded fantasy book about… well, the daughter of the king of Elfland, which makes my mention of time earlier pretty apropos. Elfland is a strange place where time doesn’t flow, so much as it simply doesn’t bother Elfland. If time was a river, Elfland is an island in the middle of the river, untouched by the waters of time. Unlike me. I’ve been ravaged by time, and I have no hair on my head to prove it.
But before we get into our review, I will just mention what the next book will be. It is a book that I have read several times and have really enjoyed, and you probably have read it too and have enjoyed it! We will be reading (rereading?) The Hobbit (1937) by J.R.R. Tolkien. The reason we are reviewing this book is that I have not read it since I started playing Dungeons & Dragons and my last memory of this book are those awful movies that came out recently that claimed to be The Hobbit but were actually some sort of drug-binge dream written down as lackluster fan fiction.
The King of Elfland’s Daughter by Lord Dunsany
I can’t say I had ever heard of this book, or the author, or any other books he has written - but I did leave this book wanting to look at his first book he had written, The Gods of Pegāna (1905) cause it seems weird and like an interesting read. But that isn’t the book I selected, instead, I had chosen The King of Elfland’s Daughter, and… that was a choice I made.
I’ll just go ahead and say it, I tried to read this book. I mean, I really tried. But every time I tried to read it, I fell asleep within the first chapter. Or my mind wandered and I couldn’t grok what was on the page. The words would just not stay on the page and I just could not read this book. It refused and I was too weak to force it.
But now, you might be wondering how exactly am I supposed to be reviewing a book that I didn’t read - and to that point, I can let you know that I listened to an audio narration of this book… which kind of defeats the point of me wanting to read more books this year, but also I wasn’t going to be able to read this book. With that said, I really think the narrated made the book enjoyable and that without that narrator, who sounded like a kindly old grandpa reading me a fairytale, then I doubt I could’ve finished this book. Which is a shame, cause the book has given me a lot of ideas even if I didn’t actually care for the book itself. We’ll get to that.
If you are interested in listening to a kindly grandpa read you a book that just brings warmth to my heart, check out the version I listened to and see if you too can also gain such warmth - The King of Elfland’s Daughter narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.
Review
Just to go ahead and let you know my rating of the book…
3/5
This is a hard book to rate. On the one hand, I didn’t like it. On the other, it sure did give me a lot of ideas for a book that I just couldn’t get into.
It’s well-written, evocative, and just a meandering boringness to it that left me confused about what exactly was going on and how things were going to resolve. But things did resolve and it was… kind of satisfactory?
The best parts of the book are definitely the ideas and world. The bad is kind of everything else. Characters are one-dimensional at best. The plotting is both way too slow and way too fast. I can honestly say that I just don’t care about some of the world-building choices made, but also like… I really like other things. It’s a very hit-and-miss book, with a lot of missing but with some pretty solid hits within it. If you haven’t read this book… I mean… maybe give it a go? Or like… maybe it’s better if you have a good narrator to read you the book.
The King of Elfland’s Daughter
The lord of Erl is approached by a council representing the people he rules that they want to be ‘ruled by a magic lord’ and that they want more magic in their lands so that Erl can become big and famous. The lord obeys the council’s demands and sends his son, Alveric, out to go get a wife. Also, the lord gives Alveric a sword to protect himself with. Well, that sword isn’t good enough for Alveric and he convinces a witch to make him a super-powerful magic sword to protect him… which will also end up being his undoing by the end of the book.
Alveric travels into Elfland, which just requires traveling a few days to the east, entering the lands that villagers refuse to look at, talk about, or even think about. They just act like there is nothing out there, which is a pretty fun superstition to throw on a village, their refusal to accept that they live right next to the plane of faeries. Alveric enters the forests, uses his sword to smote some awakened vines, and finds the King of Elfland’s daughter, Lirazel. They immediately fall in love, or close enough anyway, and Alveric whisks Lirazel away after killing her four bodyguards with this powerful magic sword. The two escape Elfland only for Alveric to realize that ten years have passed in the single afternoon he spent within the boundaries of Elfland and his father has been dead for several years now.
The two spend several years together, have a son (named Orion), and Lirazel is unable to really meld with the people of Erl. They keep pushing her to worship the way that they think she should, while Lirazel keeps on wanting to worship nature like the stars, leaves, water, and more. This makes Alveric upset who just doesn’t understand why she won’t just worship correctly and basically badgers her about in all their interactions.
During this time, the King of Elfland has three powerful runes that are supposed to be used to protect his kingdom. He uses the first rune as a gift to his daughter, that the moment she reads the rune, she will be brought back to the safety of Elfland. Which she does after having a bad day where Alveric basically tries to change her from being an elf to being a human, forcing her to be less of herself, and more what he wants.
The King of Elfland then uses his second rune to make it so that Alveric can not enter Eflland. Elfland ebbs and flows away as Alveric tries to re-enter the mystical realm in an attempt to ‘rescue’ his wife and bring her back to him, their son, and the land of Erl. This quest takes Alveric thirteen years to complete, during this time their son, Orion, is getting older and older. Due to being half-elf and half-human, he has a strangeness to him but he is basically in charge of the land of Erl, even at his young age while his father is off on a big quest to find Elfland and Lirazel. During this time, Orion hunts down and kills a unicorn, and then sneaks into Elfland to get trolls to help him down unicorns… and then the trolls get wil-o’-wisps to help kill unicorns. Lots of unicorn hunting… all the while Alveric is with a band of four people walking the countryside trying to enter Elfland.
It isn’t until Alveric finds out it is because of his magic sword that he has been unable to enter Elfland. The King of Elfland’s second rune keeps Alveric from being unable to enter the realm, and so Alveric must discard his special sword to enter, but he refuses and keeps trying to enter with his magic sword. Eventually, Lirazel’s pining for her son and Alveric is enough to make the King of Elfland use his final rune, which was supposed to only be used to keep Elfland safe from a future danger that will surely cause some great harm now to Elfland. This third rune causes Elfland and the land of Erl to become one, reuniting Lirazel, Alveric, and Orion - allowing them to all live forever in Elfland.
The Good
There are several great ideas within the book that I really like. The time dilation plays a major part in the story between Elfland and land of Erl, which we see nowadays in the Feywild where you never know how much time might pass while you were away visiting some fey lord made of flowers. In addition, the council who wanted magic, and then got more magic than they wanted and were eventually absorbed into Elfland is a great adventure idea where the village leaders seek magic above all else and are tricked by a fiend or aberration into following its commandments that will ultimately end up with a dead village.
Other things include how we see unicorns as being fantastical and strange, and the people of Elfland see our normal critters, like foxes, as being fantastical and strange. I really like the idea that our squirrels could be seen as weird and strange by others, just like how I would see an owlbear as weird and strange.
The Bad
Alright, this is going to be a longer list just due to the nature of the book. The first one is a big problem throughout the book and that is that Lirazel seems to have no motivation beyond marrying the first human she finds. The characters just aren’t that interesting and you don’t really understand why Lirazel and Alveric are together beyond they just happened to be at the same place in Elfland. In fact, you can’t even really tell what Lirazel is like since all of her descriptions, even from herself and her father are about how beautiful she is and how lesser men would be forced to do what she wants because she is so beautiful. Her entire persona seems to just be pretty. Though we do get one scene where she decides to worship the reflections of stars, which is a cool idea to circumvent the “you can’t worship stars in normal, human society” she immediately gets found out by Alveric who forces her to stop.
Frankly, I’m baffled that she even likes Alveric, let alone wants to spend all eternity with this guy. All he seems to do is force her to do things that he wants. And that kind of is all of Alveric’s motivation as well. In the beginning, he needs an elven wife, while good news he found one. Then when Lirazel returns to Elfland and he goes off on a thirteen-year quest to find her. His prime motivation is thinking of her beauty and that drives him to find her.
Takeaways
There are a lot of great ideas in this book, which is why I’m glad I read/listened through it. It’s pretty obvious what other people have taken away from it, like the time dilation between the lands of fey and humans. That unicorn horns are highly prized. That sometimes, magic brings a lot more baggage than you might’ve been prepared for. A sense of mystery when it comes to magic. Adventure ideas around visiting Elfland. Awakened vines that attack visitors. And so much more. There are a lot of ideas - but it’s just in a bit of a bleh story with a meandering plot that takes forever to tell you the story. I’ve no idea why we needed so many chapters devoted to unicorn hunting, or to Alveric’s wanderings, or to talking about wil-o’-wisp histories, or other things. It was just there and it made the book feel so sluggish and boring.
Other Media
If you liked this book and want something similar, I have a few recommendations! But also, if you have recommendations for me and others, leave them in the comments below! I want to add books to my reading list!
Lord of the Rings series by J.R.R. Tolkien
Dragonlance series by Margaret Weiss & Tracy Hickman
The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
basically every fantasy book ever written
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