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The Elfin Ship (1982)

di James P. Blaylock

Altri autori: Vedi la sezione altri autori.

Serie: Balumnia Trilogy (1)

UtentiRecensioniPopolaritàMedia votiCitazioni
436956,906 (3.73)8
Fantasy. Fiction. Humor (Fiction.) HTML:A trilogy sets sail with a novel that’s charming, light-hearted and funny . . . Feels a little like The Hobbit or The Wind in the Willows” (Fantasy Literature).
 
James P. Blaylock’s debut novel The Elfin Ship has become a classic of whimsical fantasy. With echoes of Kenneth Graham and Mark Twain, it’s a gentle, eccentric, and hilarious novel that will delight readers of all ages.
 
Trading with the elves used to be so simple. Every year Master Cheeser Jonathan Bing would send his very best cheeses downriver to traders who would eventually return with Elfin wonders for the people of Twombly Town.
 
But no more . . .
 
First, the trading post at Willowood Station was mysteriously destroyed. Then, a magical elfin airship began making forays overhead. Something was definitely amiss.
 
So Jonathan set off downriver to deliver the cheeses himself, accompanied by the amazing Professor Wurzle, the irrepressible Dooly, and his faithful dog Ahab. It would have been such a pleasant trip, if not for the weeping skeleton, mad goblins, magic coins, an evil dwarf, a cloak of invisibility—and a watch that stopped time.
 
If only the return trip were so simple.
 
“Madcap’s not a word heard much these days, but it’s a great one to apply to the characters and their adventures in The Elfin Ship. From start to finish, Blaylock maintains a high level of inventive goofiness that never lets up. If you want about as great a break as possible from the brutalities and cynicism of much of today’s fantasy, this book is it.” —Black Gate.
… (altro)
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A cheese-maker sails down the river to trade his wares and inadvertently finds himself in the middle of an adventure involving a sinister dwarf and a magic watch.

The Elfin Ship deals with three men on a boat (to say nothing of the dog) going on a reluctant quest in which good food and creature comforts are elaborately described, all written in the folksy style of the 19th-century American West. Which is to say that the book reads like a mélange of Jerome K. Jerome, J. R. R. Tolkien (circa The Hobbit), and Mark Twain (with perhaps a dash of Jules Verne's steampunkisms thrown into the mix). The book begins with an epigram from The Wind in the Willows, but I would argue that Kenneth Grahame's influence is largely absent from this novel. While both books share a focus on homey comforts, boating trips, and unheroic decency, Grahame's book has a degree of pathos and human frailty that is absent from The Elfin Ship, which is merely sweet and comforting and forgettable.
( )
  proustbot | Jun 19, 2023 |
review of
James P. Blaylock's The Elfin Ship
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - February 20, 2017

Blaylock's name was vaguely familiar when I picked up this bk & its successor. As it turns out, I've read one other bk by him, The Last Coin, 9 yrs ago. People often comment on how-time-flies when you get older but it's forever weird to me that in the 9 yrs from 1977, when I published my 1st bk, & 1986, when I went on the "6 Fingers Crossed Country T.Ore/Tour" my life changed dramatically but in the 9 yrs since I read The Last Coin it doesn't seem like much time has gone by at all.

Anyway, one thing that's changed is that the reviews I was writing then were just capsule reviews & now they're often veritable monsters of cross-referencing or what-not. The review I wrote then is basically this:

"Blaylock is in that minority of SF writers who're also clearly comical. I like that combination. Other writers that spring to mind are the team of G. C. Edmondson & C. M. Kotlan, Ron Goulart, & Rudy Rucker. I'd read more by him if I ever ran across anything again. There's something about absurdist SF that's dear to my parallel dimension baboon heart."

Not much, write? [sic] I really don't remember The Last Coin & that review isn't going to help much. As far as my recent reading goes, I'd put The Elfin Ship more in the company of Esther Friesner's Majyk: something that I enjoyed but don't necessarily recommend.

The front cover of The Elfin Ship has a quote from Philip K. Dick on it that says: "A magical world, magically presented... having journeyed there, you will not wish to leave, nor ever to forget," The front cover of The Last Coin has a quote on it from William Gibson: "Blaylock is a singular American fabulist!". That's pretty powerful promotion-speak. Blaylock must be a popular guy. Dick died on March 2, 1982. The 1st edition of The Elfin Ship was published in August 1982. Was Dick's praise sd on his deathbed?!

When I was a kid & every yr was a thousand yrs apart, I read Tolkein's The Hobbit followed in probably quick succession by his The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I'm pretty sure I read the latter at least twice & the former I may've even read 3 times. I don't usually do that so, obviously, I loved it.

The Elfin Ship seems to be exploring similar territory. There's the peaceful small village that the reluctant humble hero hails from. There's the magician & the elves & the dwarves n'at. The evil creeping over the land. The epigraph is a quote from Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Even tho that was a famous bk in my childhood &, apparently, still is, I can't remember reading it. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about it:

"The Wind in the Willows is a children's novel by Kenneth Grahame, first published in 1908. Alternately slow moving and fast paced, it focuses on four anthropomorphised animals in a pastoral version of Edwardian England. The novel is notable for its mixture of mysticism, adventure, morality and camaraderie, and celebrated for its evocation of the nature of the Thames Valley." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wind_in_the_Willows

It seems like a precursor to Tolkein then. That folksy pastoral thing is established in The Elfin Ship right away:

"Jonathan waved him in and shut the door against the cold wind. First it was airships, then Gilroy Bastable, all out under peculiar circumstances. "H'lo there, Gilroy! Quite a night out, wouldn't you say? Could be described as a wet one if it came to descriptions, don't you think?"" - p 6

""Filthy night out; that's what I call it. Full of mud holes and hurricanes. Blew my hat into the river. I saw it with my own eyes right here in my head. Hat sails off spinning like the widow's windmill, turns round the church steeple twice, then lands smack and was gone in the river. Brand new hat. Hideous night."" - p 7

& then there's fun w/ dream (il)logic:

""But I was thinking, Professor, that if a dog had a dream about a man, mightn't that man say a few words now and again, like men do? And so, if a dog were to talk in his sleep it mightn't all be dog talk; perhaps the people in his dreams might get a word in now and again."" - p 35

In addition to the afore-mentioned standard fare of elves n'at there're also trolls:

"The two trolls waiting on the riverside, however, were anything but laughable. As Jonathan stood watching the trolls which were watching him, the one atop the roots reached down in among them. came up with a tone, and began to gnaw at it." - p 44

Apparently the secrets of strong teeth are known to trolls. They must not use US dentists. & then there's that "evil creeping over the land" that I mentioned earlier:

""Who is this Selznak?" asked Jonathan, gazing into his glass of ale and wondering what sort of a fiendish thing Gosset had encountered. He offered some of his ale to the Professor, who looked at it then shook his head. "He's not an altogether nice chap, I gather."

""Nice chap!" Gosset almost shouted. "A curse is what. A dwarf of some sort from the Forest. Came upriver six months back through Willowood. You heard about Willowood?"

""Yes," said the Professor.

""And Stooton-on-River?"

""No."

""All gone by the boards. Empty! Things are . . . abroad in the land," Gosset said darkly." - p 60

The Goblins were probably my favorites. They're like indestructible party animals:

"Jonathan was certain it was intent upon firing the ship. Instead, the creature set fire to its own hair and leaped blazing to and fro about the deck. Wild laughter issued from between its pointed teeth, and the fire seemed to melt the skin from its face and it ran down and left only a grinning skull with flaming hair." - p 71

Now, there's an instance where "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" gets a little tricky. Then there're axolotls:

""All we need are axolotls. A man can't keep live axolotls with him all the time, you know. What we have to do is find an axolotl den and borrow a few. They don't mind. Not a bit. Glad to do it, in fact, as long as they're returned to their den afterward and given a bit of salt."" - p 84

Now, here's where Blaylock starts to get on rocky turf. I seriously doubt that a Mexican salamander aka a Mexican walking fish, a neotenic salamander, wd take kindly to being taken away & borrowed, salt or no salt so any aspiring magicians out there had better come up with a vegan substitute - & I don't mean platypodes either.

"Dooly went back to looking for shallows. He shouted and pointed at an odd creature near the shore, and the Professor and Jonathan at first feared that it was the little rope-chewing beast. But it turned out to be nothing more than a normal unremarkable platypus that blinked at them in a friendly way as they drifted past." - p 134

Now, given that Blaylock is an American author & that the platypus is native to Eastern Australia & Tasmania it wd appear that The Elfin Ship's setting is not the US@ or necessarily any existing Earth continent. What saves Blaylock from being reported thru time travel to HUAC as a result of this suspicious activity is that he frequently mentions bookstores in a positive light:

"They passed two interesting-looking bookstores, filled to overflowing with a likely hodgepodge. It looked like G. Smithers country to Jonathan, and he noted the cross streets, intent upon stopping in for some browsing on their return." - p 149

Goblins & trolls wdn't stop me from used bookstore browsing either.

""Well how much is it worth, do you suppose, six pence?"

""Easily," said Jonathan.

""Then half that. Everything here is half price. Didn't I tell you that already? Seems like I did. The almanacs are free, but you'll have have to wrestle the mice for them."

""Fine," Jonathan said, picking up an empty wooden crate and putting the pirate book in the bottom with a few others by the same author. Then he ran across a shelf of books by Glub Boomp, the elf author from the White Mountains who wrote about lands way off in space and about the Wonderful Isles and a country beneath the sea called Balumnia that was peopled by mermen. Needless to say, Jonathan stacked these away in his crate too.

"But he really struck paydirt when he stumbled upon the collected works of G. Smithers of Brompton Village. At home Jonathan had a dozen or so volumes, most of them dog-eared and falling to bits after having been read and re-read and loaned out and so on. But there was a complete set of G. Smithers, one hundred-twenty-nine volumes in all and every one as good as the other." - pp 175-176

[It's a little-known fact that the merman of Bulemia camouflage their undersea village w/ vomit to keep away the unwelcome]

In short, our hero has the right priorities.

"The Moon Man—for that's how Jonathan thought of him—was a peculiar-looking person, there was little doubt about that, but it was very easy to see that he might well be a king of some nature. Behind his spectacles his eyes were very jolly, but Jonathan could see that there was some nature of seriousness on his mind. As with the Squire, however, Jonathan would find that the Moon Man liked the right sort of things: eating apple pie and cream for breakfast, capering with platypi on the riverbanks, strolling along between hedgerows, admiring marbles with the Squire and, it turned out in time, investigating the mysteries of kaleidoscopes and paperweights." - p 156

Along w/ all the rest of the usual fare there're rings-of-power too. A fantasy bk that didn't have any of these standard tropes might be hard to write but it might make a nice change.

""Show friend Dooly your ring, Squire, like a good fellow," Twickenham said.

"The Squire put his bag of marbles away and winked at Dooly. Then he very slowly said, "Twicky Twicky Twicky Twickenham—ham sandwich," and waved the ring on the middle finger of his left hand in Dooly's direction." - p 161

""Of the rings, three have been found. Miles the Magician has one, Squire Myrkle another, and you, Dooly, the third. Where the fourth is is unimportant. It's likely that your grandfather traded it finally also. Rumors came along several years ago that he was spending a good deal of time of late beneath the sea in a submarine contraption and that he had as a companion a pig of exceptional intelligence dressed as a clown. It was kept previously in a teakwood cabinet above Seaside by a bunjo man, or so the story goes. I'm beginning to suspect, however, that something is amiss in the tale.["]' - p 165

The pig's tail is screwy, that's what's amiss. But that's ok. The descriptions of how the towns have changed now that something's a foot in this tail struck me as ferally appealing:

"["]The houses are inhabited now by things from the swamp. Goblins and hobgoblins and animals behaving in odd ways go about freely in the town and even carry on trade with two or three of the merchants who have elected not to give up their shops."" - p 180

Even the hobgoblins are upwardly-mobile in a prosperous society.

"The whole quiet vista was something close to awesome; it silenced all of them. But perhaps most awesome of all was the weird ship that floated at anchor off a sandy spit halfway around the lagoon and at the end of the path across the rocks. It was an astonishing craft, obviously built either by elves or by one of the tribes of marvel men in the Wonderful Isles—built by someone, anyway, who knew what such devices ought to look like. It was a spiraly affair, with odd, seemingly senseless crenelations and spires and a series of what might be taken for arced shark fins down the center of its back. On a foggy night the thing would certainly resemble a sea monster more closely than a ship, for it had several round portholes at the front, tow of which on either side of its pointed nose, glowed from some inner light and looked for all the world like eyes. On the sides were protruding fins, shaped like the fins of an enormous tide pool sculpin. Seawater to the rear of the vessel seemed to be churning and bubbling, and a whoosh of water shot out of the end every minute or so." - p 200

A part of why the above passage 'works' for me is that it evokes Jules Verne's character Captain Nemo from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea & Mysterious Island - 2 novels that've made a positive impression on my fantasy life. Blaylock is far from wholy original but he's good at keeping a literary tradition of comraderie & adventure going.

"Escargot dug around in his bag and came up with a bottle of cream sherry and a bag of walnuts. In the light of one of the lanterns the four of them sat about on deck chairs cracking walnuts and sipping the sherry which was very good—made across the sea in the sunny Oceanic Isles." - p 229

Sounds good to me.

""And two nights ago. In this very room. I opened up that wardrobe and there was a ghastly sight. There was moths. A dozen of 'em, and they had my sweater on the floor. Knives and forks they had. The whole lot of 'em, and they were sawing the bloody sleeve off. Moths the size of golf with little arms and hands. It was ghastly. A positive horror."" - p 269

The thing is, they didn't have napkins, the barbarians. Now, I admit, the goblins don't seem to consistently use napkins either.

"A figure appeared shortly thereafter, outlined in the lamplit window. Jonathan could see that it sported one of Lonny Gosset's caps, sidewise on its head. The thing cackled with laughter and dumped what must have been the contents of a silverware drawer out onto the roadway, for there was the clatter and clang of cutlery as the contents of the drawer fell together below. The sound, apparently, pleased the marauding goblins somehow, for something like a cheer rose from a number of goblins within the cabin. One of them stumbled out and down and retrieved the spilled silverware, then clambered back into the cabin and dumped the boxful out the window again." - p 286

Sigh.. the goblin kids w/ their sideways caps & their dumped cutlery music these days.

"About the Author" informs us that "His favorite author is Robert Louis Stevenson: his favorite book is Tristram Shandy." (p 339) I can relate. ( )
  tENTATIVELY | Apr 3, 2022 |
There's nothing quite like Blaylock -- no one I've found, at least, who writes with the same mix of whimsy and melancholy, love of fog-drenched coastal towns and home pleasures. Dated though this may be, I am deeply fond of his quixotic heroes. ( )
  RJ_Stevenson | Aug 19, 2020 |
My apologies to those folks who love this book to death but I simply bounced off it. And this is freely admitting that it takes a lot of talent to maintain the tone of whimsy in question for page after page! ( )
  Shrike58 | Jan 26, 2020 |
Terminally whimsical. Equal parts derivative and original. Blaylock's writing style is facile but flawed. The typos sprinkled throughout were distracting. The tip of the hat to Jerome K. Jerome made me grin, but for the most part it was a winsome book I'll not long remember. ( )
  satyridae | Apr 5, 2013 |
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Nome dell'autoreRuoloTipo di autoreOpera?Stato
James P. Blaylockautore primariotutte le edizionicalcolato
Sweet, Darrell K.Immagine di copertinaautore secondarioalcune edizioniconfermato
Taylor, GeoffImmagine di copertinaautore secondarioalcune edizioniconfermato

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Fantasy. Fiction. Humor (Fiction.) HTML:A trilogy sets sail with a novel that’s charming, light-hearted and funny . . . Feels a little like The Hobbit or The Wind in the Willows” (Fantasy Literature).
 
James P. Blaylock’s debut novel The Elfin Ship has become a classic of whimsical fantasy. With echoes of Kenneth Graham and Mark Twain, it’s a gentle, eccentric, and hilarious novel that will delight readers of all ages.
 
Trading with the elves used to be so simple. Every year Master Cheeser Jonathan Bing would send his very best cheeses downriver to traders who would eventually return with Elfin wonders for the people of Twombly Town.
 
But no more . . .
 
First, the trading post at Willowood Station was mysteriously destroyed. Then, a magical elfin airship began making forays overhead. Something was definitely amiss.
 
So Jonathan set off downriver to deliver the cheeses himself, accompanied by the amazing Professor Wurzle, the irrepressible Dooly, and his faithful dog Ahab. It would have been such a pleasant trip, if not for the weeping skeleton, mad goblins, magic coins, an evil dwarf, a cloak of invisibility—and a watch that stopped time.
 
If only the return trip were so simple.
 
“Madcap’s not a word heard much these days, but it’s a great one to apply to the characters and their adventures in The Elfin Ship. From start to finish, Blaylock maintains a high level of inventive goofiness that never lets up. If you want about as great a break as possible from the brutalities and cynicism of much of today’s fantasy, this book is it.” —Black Gate.

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