Lud-In-The-Mist (original 1926; edition 2005)

*note to self.copy from Al.

This is the mode that Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell echoes. The entry is a little slow (so a glance some years back wasn't sufficient to pull me straight in), but that slowness covers a great depth and wit.

The parallelism of the delusions of Faerie and Law was wonderful, subtly made manifest in the way the Law refers to fairy fruit as silk, and then when Nat's house is searched for silken vanities, fairy fruit hidden by one of the Silent People is found instead.

And every word and moment deeply deeply creepy; and if I knew how she does that!

Utterly fantastic. ( )

see http://www.sfsite.com/05a/lm103.htm ( )

I'm only halfway through (but I got there all today --) and I can see why this would be a favorite book of so many fantasy writers. It's obviously allegorical but it's very complex, in a way not based in character but in concept, that makes you want to keep poking it to see what else you can make come out of it.

On finishing: Yep, I just love this book entirely. Allegorical in the way of old folktales, where you could pick it apart forever and never figure it out completely. Lovely. ( )

This is the best book I have read in a long time. It's the first time in a couple of years that I have not simply barreled through a book to get everything out of it as quickly as possible; I wanted to pay attention to every word and sentence and paragraph in this, and not because it was one of those annoying books that hides clues about what's really going on in seemingly-innocuous details.

This is what [a:Virginia Woolf|6765|Virginia Woolf|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1183232459p2/6765.jpg] wanted to write, in [b:Orlando|18839|Orlando|Virginia Woolf|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/315Frh4Em5L._SL75_.jpg|6057225]. (Actually, no, it's not, the gender stuff in Orlando is entirely absent here, but in the sense that the prose is Woolfian and the fantastical elements are deeply integrated into culture, it is.) This is fantasy the way it ought to be. It manages to balance a fairly large cast, a reasonably complex amount of world-building, and a multi-faceted plot, deftly and without being confusing (I get confused pretty easily, so this is a serious tribute) or boring.

The cast of characters is dominated by white-coded men; there is at least one instance of a mentally handicapped character used for comic purposes, and the way Bess is handled makes me see red. So this is not something to get to wash the bad taste of RaceFail '09 and counting out of your mouth; for that, you'll want [a:N.K. Jemisin|2917917|N.K. Jemisin|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1243734625p2/2917917.jpg]'s [b:Hundred Thousand Kingdoms|6437061|The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (The Inheritance Trilogy, #1)|N.K. Jemisin|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1241136139s/6437061.jpg|6626657] or Alaya Dawn Johnson's Racing the Dark or Malinda Lo's Ash or Cindy Pon's Silver Phoenix or, you know, anything in the fantasy tag at 50books_poc. This is a book to read for some well-crafted, unusual worldbuilding and gorgeously drawn characters.

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