“A Tour of Lands and Legends”: A Review of The InkerMen’s Green and Unpleasant Land (InkerMen Press, 2007)
Having read and reviewed some of the early InkerMen titles about a year ago (also posted here), I looked forward to this new anthology of stories from the self-labeled “Independent publishers of alternative fiction and criticism” with eager anticipation, and it did not disappoint. Green and Unpleasant Land is a collection of tales and poems that “reimagine some of the stories and events of British legend and a want to write about places that had never been adequately mythologised” (back cover). I should say up front that this review is an American’s take on a very British set of tales, so I’ll be framing some of the stories for U.S. audiences. For instance, I imagined many of them being read aloud by Jude Law or Paul Bettany, which helped me to glide easily into their pacing¬—almost all of the selections mix fantasy with humor (the old Monty Pythonesque “nudge, nudge, wink, wink”) and although many of the places and figures mentioned were unfamiliar to me, it did not detract from my en