Lilith, by George MacDonald

Poor C.S. Lewis might flip in his grave, but I had a really hard time enjoying this book. Perhaps this speaks more about me than either Mr. Lewis or Mr. MacDonald.

MacDonald creates a fantastic universe (or, to play on words, a "Phantastic" universe); both in its scope and its creativity. The problem is it is just too stinkin' thick. The main character, writing from the first person, is given to spouts of metadata, conveying the difficulty he has conveying to his reader what he is experiencing. I give kudos to MacDonald for his command of the language, but I fear his temporal removal from my own bestows upon his effort a sense of antiquity; he is just hard to read for modern folks. His modes, his grammer (and excessive use of commas and dashes) and depth make reading hard work.

And yes, that means I am a lazy reader. Look at what I read for crying out loud.

The story is unique, in its own right. Even though he wrote the book over 110 years ago (egads!!), he touches upon concepts that others have only copied; a man travels to a new place where the metaphysical becomes, for all intents and purposes, the physical. His own identity is questioned, and must be discovered. The issue of being is put under a magnifying glass. For these I applaud MacDonald. I would just hate to have to read it again. *grin*