Lord Dunsany
5 books
- These are tiny fables, most under a page, where Death, Time, and forgotten gods wander around being wry and melancholy (Charon gets one of the best endings I know). Lovely to sip a few at bedtime, though read straight through they can blur together.
- Strange little tales, most only a few pages, where jewel thieves creep toward the Gibbelins' hoard and rival idols sulk in the same temple, and the endings turn on you with a dry, wicked smile. If you like your fantasy dreamlike and slightly cruel, this is a treat.
- A magician in old Spain holds a charwoman's shadow, and his apprentice sets out to win it back for her. Dunsany writes sentences like slow gold, and this fairy tale for adults earns its ending honestly.
- Fair warning, there's no plot, just a whole invented mythology in little prose-poem fragments, gods like Mung who is death and Skarl drumming so the great god never wakes. If you like scripture-cadence strangeness before bed, an entry or two at a time, it's lovely.
- You’ll like this for its strange, moonlit beauty and its sadness about wanting two worlds at once. Alveric’s journey into Elfland, where time barely behaves and Lirazel cannot quite belong to the human world, feels more like an old ballad than a modern fantasy novel.