This is a spectacular book about the Middle Ages and the Crusades, and love denied and the Lusignan family of Poitiers and their resident fairy, Melusine. She appears, even now, on the carvings on the Chateau (and she tells how she transported the stones to build it, being a fairy and all). Mujica Lainez breathes beautiful life into her story and into the world she inhabited, down to her vengeful mother and conniving sisters, and brings the time period to life.

The story then continues through the Crusades and the fight for Jerusalem through one of her descendants with whom she falls desperately in love centuries later. All of the panorama of knights on horseback, chivalry, hermits, living conditions, and lives filled with regret are covered here through Melusine's voice. It is eloquent, funny, biting, and insightful, especially as she is "writing" in modern times and has gained insight into her story through reading Proust and Freud.

What gave this story a lower star rating than I would have hoped is the amount of detail Mujica Lainez gets bogged down in place of Story. I know he did his research and was quite the scholar. But we do not need every single rippling of cloth to know that it was multi-hued. Or every single battle in the Crusades during the fall of Jerusalem. Or the list of cloth in the tapestries that were destroyed by soldiers. Those parts, while lovely and well-researched, seemed more a self-accolade about the research he had done and an author in need of reinforcement of his prowess.. And the ending seemed too contrived and sudden and with little invested in Melusine's story into the Now. ( )

Ya había sonado, en el campanario robusto de Lusignan, capilla del prior ato de Nuestra Señora, el toque de Vísperas....

Mújica Láinez me parece absolutamente ilegible. Es que se me cae de las manos, oigan. Y miren que lo intenté con éste y con "Bomarzo", pero no hay manera. Las frases de períodos tan largos, que hacen que uno tenga que regresar atrás para recordar cómo empezaron, la cantidad de páginas ocupadas en descripciones así como la multitud de subtramas nimias que poco o nada tienen que ver con el avance de la trama principal sino engordar el libro como si hubiera sido escrito más para ejercitar la musculatura del brazo que para entretener al lector, y el abuso insistente del estilo indirecto y utilización del directo a discreto criterio del autor sin que el lector pueda hallar una referencia concreta de cómo y por qué utiliza el uno o el otro, hacen que me cueste más leerle que salir en coche de este barrio en el que vivo, en día laborable. Necesito una lectura más ágil; no estoy seguro de qué valores verán en él los lectores futuros pero no le auguro que vaya a ser muy perdurable cuando se acabe la ola de nostálgicos del "boom" de la literatura latinoamericana. ( )

M.1.2

I'd seen this book highly recommended for fans of Tolkien, so I picked
it up. I'm not sure where that recommendation came from, because I
didn't see any similarity in the writing style or themes. The writing
style was particularly stilted; perhaps because it was translated from
the Spanish, but I didn't find it particularly enjoyable.

Inspired by mythology, but without a 'mythic' feel to the story, the
book briefly outlines the story of the fairy Melusine,who took human
form to love a man, but was cursed to be rejected when her lover came
upon her in her true, monstrous form, in her bath. The largest part
of the book follows the incorporeal spirit of Melusine as she follows
around a young knight in the Crusades, her descendant, that she is
obsessed with. Although at one point she tries to take human form to
be with him (it doesn't work out, as she ends up in a male body, and
the knight isn't gay), this places the bulk of the narrative at a
remove, actions being described by an intangible observer, which is
distancing. ( )