From Amazon: Some of the earliest books ever written, including The Epic of Gilgamesh and the Odyssey, deal with monsters, marvels, extraordinary voyages, and magic, and this genre, known as fantasy, remained an essential part of European literature through the rise of the modern realist novel. Tracing the history of fantasy from the earliest years through to the origins of modern fantasy in the 20th century, this account discusses contributions decade by decade—from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy and Lewis’s Narnia books in the 1950s to J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. It also discusses and explains fantasy’s continuing and growing popularity.

From me It does that, but it likes to run off on tangents.

Someone wanting to have a chronological explanation of how fantasy literature has evolved or is looking for a chronological reading list so they can see the changes for themselves, understand which author built on which author and who rejected the premise of some of the different styles.

The chronological structure was essential to tracing the origins, though I felt some was glossed over. I can get more info when needed elsewhere.

The book list at the back of the book is HUGE, and mighty helpful.

Teasing out of the different sub-types was interesting: the quest, the immersive, the portal world, the intrusive, the indigenous fantasy, liminal fantasy, and the New Weird.

There were special chapters devoted to Tolkien, Lewis, and Pratchett.

Good gravy, this was DRY. While Amazon has this book rated at a straight 5-stars, the 3.8 rating on Goodreads is more reflective of my personal experience.

Even for a 2012 publishing date, there is a significant number of contemporary writers missing from the updated version.

In addition, though the authors tried to pull apart horror, fantasy and sci-fi at the outset, the book frequently diverged from fantasy into the fringes and spent much time on combining the three, and on at least one occasion contradicts itself (Conan). In some cases, especially the contemporary section, though the discussion is thorough about why some books become popular, it doesn't effectively discuss if they're actually worth reading.

Like updating my reading list, because who doesn't have a never-going-to-finish-in-your-lifetime reading list?

From GoodreadsFarah Mendlesohn is a Hugo Award-winning British academic and writer on science fiction. In 2005 she won the Hugo Award for Best Related Book for The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction, which she edited with Edward James.

It's a short book, clocking in around 200 pages, plus there's the fabulous indexing of all the books.

While it is dry, the history was interesting, even though the author was a little scattered at times. In the later chapters, there was some bias (I believe) but overall I think she did a commendable job of trying to remove her bias from the overall list.

While some authors are omitted, especially from the contemporary chapters, it is not unexpected given the sheer volume of material available and the short book length. That information is easily found through best seller lists, online reviews and fan forums.

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Created Jan 07, 2019 at 8:11pm • Submit your own review...