Ellen Kushner on Gateway
Ellen Kushner is the author of World Fantasy Award-winner Thomas the Rhymer, a inspired retelling of an ancient legend that sees the bold and gifted young minstrel Thomas awaken the desire of the powerful Queen of Elfland – and soon discover that words are not enough to keep him from his fate!
Fantasy Masterworks paperback | Gateway eBook
As the Queen sweeps him far from the people he has known and loved into her realm of magic, opulence – and captivity – he learns at last what it is to be truly human. When he returns to his home with the Queen’s parting gift, his great task will be to seek out the girl he loved and wronged, and offer her at last the tongue that cannot lie.
But if Scottish folk lore isn’t your thing, maybe you should try the ‘Swords of Riverside’ comprising the interconnected novels Swordspoint, The Privilege of the Sword, and The Fall of the Kings (written with Delia Sherman) – which might very well be the best Fantasy series you’ve never heard of!
Of course, we don’t expect you to take our word for it . . .
‘An unforgettable opening . . . and just gets better from there’ George R. R. Martin
‘Swordspoint was the best fantasy novel of 1987. The Fall of the Kings is better – twistier and deeper’ Neil Gaiman
‘It’s beautifully written, breezy, quick, hysterically funny, poignant and bloody and world-weary and heartrendingly naive by turns. This is a fantastic book, a coming-of-age story, and I love it with a quite deep and unreasonable love’ Elizabeth Bear
‘One of the most gorgeous books I’ve ever read: it’s witty and wonderful, with characters that will provoke, charm and delight’ Holly Black
‘A tale as witty, beguiling and ingenious as a collaboration between Jane Austen and M. John Harrison . . . a well nigh faultless first novel’ Interzone
‘A glorious thing, the book we might have had if Noel Coward had written a vehicle for Errol Flynn’ Gene Wolfe
‘A many-faceted pleasure. It manages to evoke both the witty Regency romances of Georgette Heyer and the fog-shrouded dangerous streets of Fritz Leiber’s Lankhmar’ Guy Gavriel Kay
‘Fantasy’s answer to Catcher in the Rye’ John Scalzi
‘Kushner and Sherman don’t spin fables or knit fancies: they are world-forgers, working in a language of iron and air’ Gregory Maguire
‘A wonderful book, beautifully written with marvellous magical moments’ Jo Walton
Satisfied?
