A Strange Country

February 1, 2020
Elves and humans unite to try to save their respective realms. It's 1938, and Europe has been at war for six years. Gen. Alejandro de Yepes and Maj. Jesús Rocamora are holed up inside Alejandro's Extremadura castillo when three strange men appear inside the grand hall. One of them--a portly, affable redhead named Petrus--leads the other two to the wine cellar, where they proceed to get drunk. When Alejandro and Jesús follow, seeking answers, Petrus explains that he and his companions, Marcus and Paulus, are elves and that a fellow elf named Aelius is responsible for the conflicts plaguing both of their peoples. Petrus and company have a plan to defeat their mutual foe, whose goal is domination through mass annihilation, but it requires Alejandro and Jesús to decamp to the elves' world of mists. French author Barbery's sequel to The Life of Elves (2016) is broken into three parts: "Alliances," which encompasses Jesús' and Alejandro's origin stories; "Genesis," which provides Petrus' history; and "Ruin," which details their joint campaign. Barbery's fondness for her characters--the bravely bumbling Petrus, in particular--suffuses the first two sections, lending them a fairy-tale air enhanced by the omniscient third-person narration. Shared bottles of wine and pots of tea facilitate philosophical conversation; at its best, "this is the story of a few souls who, in war, knew the peace of encounter." Regrettably, come the book's climax, Barbery abandons nearly all pretense of plot in favor of opaque imagery and florid prose. What starts as an elegiac meditation on fellowship devolves into an incoherent fever dream.

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March 2, 2020
In the convoluted follow-up to The Lives of Elves, Barbery pits humans and elves against a common enemy bent on destruction. In an alternate history, it’s 1938, a world war rages, and Spain is mired in civil war. Gen. Alejandro de Yepes and his right-hand man, Maj. Jesús Rocamora, are at de Yepes’s ancestral home, Extremaduro, when a snowstorm begins and three strangers appear on the property without leaving footprints. The three—Petrus, Marcus, and Paulus—are elves, sent to Extremaduro to make an alliance in an attempt to stop Aelius, an elf who is responsible for the war ravaging both the human and the elven worlds. Petrus leads the way over a magical bridge into “the fog” of the elven world, which is disappearing for unclear reasons. Due to the recently discovered notebook of a 16th-century painter, the elves believe Alejandro may be the chosen person to save their world in a battle foretold for the next day. At its best, Barbery’s imaginative tale reads as a mix of J.R.R. Tolkien and Hayao Miyazaki, epic in scope yet grounded by humor. However, the plot is often confusing and gets bogged down by Barbery’s florid scene-setting. Meanwhile, the poetic prose (the elves are big fans of verse) regarding the allegorical nature of the elven fog and climactic finale hint at a deeper message—but what that message is remains frustratingly obscured. Series fans will want to take a look, but the uninitiated need not apply.

March 1, 2020
In the sequel to The Life of Elves (2016), Barbery continues building the poetic, fantastical world begun in that book. Alejandro de Yepes has always been able to talk to the dead. As a Spanish soldier fighting in 1938 Castillo, he encounters ghosts everywhere he goes. The elf Petrus notices the young man's connection to the departed and realizes Alejandro is special. Petrus invites Alejandro and his comrade Jesus to drink a strange tea that opens their eyes to a bridge between the elf world and the human world. Now the soldiers must fight in an even more significant war, the one raging among the elves themselves. Readers who love meditative, dreamlike fiction will enjoy this translation, which rings with the music of the original French. While the novel is light on plot and relies heavily on the previous book, new readers will become absorbed in the descriptions of the elf cities and the mysterious mists surrounding them. A long diversion into Petrus' backstory is also intriguing. Recommended for fans of classic fantasy.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)