A review by lanko
The Gods of Pegana by Lord Dunsany
5.0
Great reading! Dunsany created a whole mythology, from the creation of the universe itself to how the gods act around.
I heard he had a vast influence of writers such as Lovecraft, Le Guin, Tolkien, Robert Howard and so on.
The writing is very classical but far from being archaic, which is a plus.
My favorite god has to be Mung, which is apparently the aspect of Death on this universe. People initially think of him as evil, but as the story unfolds some slowly realize his purpose.
One human builds a tower and shouts curses at this god. Mung does not reply by killing him, and this impresses people enough that they start giving this man gifts and such.
Eventually, as this human ages and decays, death does not come, to the point he finally realizes what's happening and in desperation starts singing praises to Mung, who simply ignores him for eternity.
Even as he turned to bones decades and centuries and millenia later, the guy was still alive. Pretty nasty and fabulous tale!
It's a very short book as well (~100 pages) but it did show the promise of a great world, and some very nice well written passages.
I heard he had a vast influence of writers such as Lovecraft, Le Guin, Tolkien, Robert Howard and so on.
The writing is very classical but far from being archaic, which is a plus.
My favorite god has to be Mung, which is apparently the aspect of Death on this universe. People initially think of him as evil, but as the story unfolds some slowly realize his purpose.
One human builds a tower and shouts curses at this god. Mung does not reply by killing him, and this impresses people enough that they start giving this man gifts and such.
Eventually, as this human ages and decays, death does not come, to the point he finally realizes what's happening and in desperation starts singing praises to Mung, who simply ignores him for eternity.
Even as he turned to bones decades and centuries and millenia later, the guy was still alive. Pretty nasty and fabulous tale!
It's a very short book as well (~100 pages) but it did show the promise of a great world, and some very nice well written passages.