stuff. Of course there was and is all the Arthurian world, but powerful as it is, it is imperfectly naturalized, associated with the soil of Britain but not with English; and does not replace what I felt to be missing. For one thing its ‘faerie’ is too lavish, and fantastical, incoherent and repetitive. For another and more important thing: it is i

I reread Ursula Le Guin’sEarthsea quartet, her ideas about shadow selves, our fears, running away, then turning and hunting down what terrifies us made perfect sense to me. Her Earthsea is another world, perfectly delineated in a map I studied again and again. Years later I read how and when she had created those maps: in her kitchen, on a roll of

“The best kind, of course,” Slowswift said, tapping his book. “The kind about monsters and myths.