A Faerie Story But Not the Kind You're Thinking

Phantastes by George MacDonald

I started off my year of reading by deciding to read one of the books that inspired the books that had such a huge impact on me. Especially The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and The Lord of the Rings books.

After the first few pages, it was already so clear where C.S. Lewis may have gotten the idea of stepping into a Faerie world running alongside ours but completely strange and foreign.

And, many of the themes (of love, of good, of evil) not to mention a plethora of jaunty songs harken to Tolkien.

I don't wanna be too hyperbolic here, but it's been a long time since a book changed my life. This is one of them. It is at once the most profound and rich book I've read in years. The journey of Anodos as a regular, normal person suddenly transported to Faerie world is, of course, captivating. But the most surprising thing about this book for me was how the most central theme to the book was love.

Yes, it's called a Faerie Romance. No, it's not Romantasy. It is, at its core, about giving love, receiving love and the universal desire to BE LOVED juxtaposed with the core goodness of giving love.

I won't spoil it beyond that. Because this is a book you should absolutely go into without reading anything about it. Enter Faerie World with Anodos and spend this journey discovering right alongside him.

Since when you're a writer reading is never just reading, reading Phantastes made me want to write an old fashioned Faerie Story with simple wisdom lost to the ages. It feels like everyone wants every book to be bigger, faster, more full of action, but there has to be a place for modernized Faerie Stories that actually teach us something too.

Just a thought! Please read this book, so we can talk about it.

"All a man has to do is better what he can," - George MacDonald, Phantastes.