Customer Reviews

The Wealdwife's Tale

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Paul Hazel - ever heard of him? Seems he wrote a trilogy of novels (one of which was a World Fantasy Award nominee) in the `80s, and then one more book, The Wealdwife's Tale, in 1993, then dropped off the face of the earth. I bought a copy of this last one back in 2000 at a remainder shop; then it sat unread on my bookshelf for the past ten years. I was browsing through my library the other day and cracked the book open. The first few paragraphs seemed pleasantly droll, so I decided to give the book a read.

This jaded fantasy fan, who has come to dislike almost any post-Tolkien book set In a Feudal Realm Where Magic is Real!, is surprised at how much he enjoyed this book. It's droll and creepy all at once. The setting is a dukedom (the technology level seems to be in the 19th century, with a couple of references to people having traveled to a large city to send a wire or board a train) nestled against an enchanted/cursed wood which no-one has ever entered. The duke, grieving for his dead wife, has been told by a soothsayer that he can find her again if he goes into the impenetrable forest, and naturally he figures out a way to do just that.

Occasionally the sentence structure threw me off; I'd have to go back a few sentences to make sense of the sentence I was trying to read. This is really something best read aloud. Given the proper intonation, there'd be no doubt what was going on.

This is not one of those books that have happy endings. The curse is pretty awful, and it's apparently going to continue forever, and as for a reason why, it looks like it's just because that's how it's always been. Maybe it wouldn't be your cup of schnapps, but I was delighted to discover it.

If you enjoyed P. Hazel's book you might also enjoy Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast series. Both series rely heavily on rambling Welsh/Celtic mythology. I, though, don't care for either!