Book/ Series: A Midsummer Tempest by Poul Anderson (Operation Otherworld Series Book #3, but can be read as standalone) Published: 1974 Book Tropes: Alternative English History/ Fantasy Recommended for fans of: Shakespeare (esp. The Tempest and A Midsummer Night’s Dream), R.L. Stevenson (esp. The Black Arrow) Awards: 1975 Mythopoeic Award
Some time back, LibraryThing recommended A Midsummer Tempest for those who like Shakespeare’s plays, steampunk, the old adventure classics and medieval English history. I’ll second that recommendation, as long as you are certain that this blend is exactly what you’re looking for.
Piranesi is fantasy fiction but at its heart, it is a mystery. And what a mind-boggling, thought-provoking mystery it is.
A house with at least 7000 halls, giant statues, sea tides and migratory birds has only 2 inhabitants: Piranesi and The Other. Where have all the other humans gone? Does the House leave secret messages for Piranesi, even as he struggles to record all that he sees there? And why is The Other searching for secrets of immortality and other occultist knowledge?
A human girl gets translocated to the Fae world for mysterious reasons. There, she meets the Nightmare King, who sets her a task to help rout the Unseelie invaders. Not an easy task! The rules of the Fae world are strange, and Claire has very little to guide her. Even the Nightmare King, once the Lord of Dreams, seems to oscillate between villainy and madness. Can Claire be the hero she always wanted to be, in The Lord of Dreams?
Six words to describe this book: gentle, folkloric, dream-like, odd, confusing, hypnotic.
Margaret Coventry is having a small bout of rebellion against her match-making family, when she is kidnapped and taken by force into the alternate universe of Plenilune. You see, Rupert de la Mare, soon-to-be Plenilune’s overlord, has been challenged whether he can take a human wife, and the nefarious Rupert doesn’t let challenges slide.
This is only a small part of the plot (the blurb would make you think otherwise). Margaret is a fish out of water as she begins to learn – and love – the magical landscape and history of Plenilune and its people. Along the way, Margaret breaks a curse with the help of a dragon, hunts down a wild boar (not intentionally), and rescues a kingdom. Oh, and she meets Dammerung, the War-wolf.
Book Blurb: The fate of Plenilune hangs on the election of the Overlord, for which Rupert de la Mare and his brother are the only contenders, but when Rupert’s unwilling bride-to-be uncovers his plot to murder his brother, the conflict explodes into civil war. To assure the minds of the lord-electors of Plenilune that he has some capacity for humanity, Rupert de la Mare has been asked to woo and win a lady before he can become the Overlord, and he will do it—even if he has to kidnap her.
(The blurb really doesn’t do the book any justice, but I suppose the book cover art more than makes up for it. Book cover art is by Carlos Quevedo, his amazing work HERE.)
