The best books that capture the power of myth

Terry Pratchett was an author fueled by worldly rage, and he turned that anger into deeply philosophical books cleverly disguised as fantasy satire. I first read Small Gods as a teenager and it forever shaped my view of narrative and belief. This theme creeps up repeatedly in my writing and it unashamedly started here.

Small Gods illustrates the power of myth over culture and religion, and what happens when myth stagnates. It has been written down and crystalized. Traditions and laws form around it. The myth can therefore no longer evolve with the culture it shaped. As with anything that stagnates, it becomes poisonous. Readers will no doubt recognize real-world parallels that will evoke some rage in some, but hopefully deeper thought as well.

This book is one of the best at capturing the impact of myth on history, culture, and politics. Thompson starts long before the Easter 1916 Rising, the book’s central event, and examines how Celticity became a focal point of reclaiming an Irish identity separate from the British. Just as Jack Zipes’ Grimm Legacies demonstrates how the collection of folklore developed a unified German cultural identity, Thompson illustrates how collecting (and in many cases updating) the myths of the land gave Ireland not only a new identity but also a new history. The heroes of those mythic stories would be used for the next three centuries as allegories for both Ireland and the Irish in art, literature, theatre, and political rhetoric. It is the blueprint of all my worldbuilding.

This book takes place in the early 19th century and is masterfully written in the style of the time. The language is magical. I find every tangent, every pages-long footnote captivating. They are largely what makes the narrative so eerie, so other-worldly.

Clarke has taken the folklore of England and created it anew, with one important addition: the Raven King. The man who brought magic into the world. What she has created is dark and wild and harkens back to pre-Victorian folklore which is both thrilling and terrifying. All that the Victorians did to sanitize and civilize the myths of Britain and Ireland has been undone by Clarke’s skillful prose. And that struggle is lived out in the story as Mr. Norrell strives to make English magic ‘respectable.’

Folklore and nature conservation is a subjects close to my heart. When I met my husband, an ecologist, many of our first conversations were on the importance of narrative to get people interested in conservation efforts. Folklore is the perfect tool.

This book does that job beautifully. As a piece of narrative nonfiction, it collects fairy tales, personal memoirs, and natural history in a lyrical journey through the forests of England. Maitland centers each chapter on an English woodland and the stories associated with it, be they fairy tales or history. More importantly, she discusses not only how myth shapes culture, but how landscape shapes myth. I reference it time and again not only as an academic, but as an author who creates worlds rich in landscape and folklore.

The first in the Winternight Trilogy, The Bear and the Nightingale takes place in medieval Russia. Despite its historical setting, it feels like reading a fairy tale. Magical realism permeates the narrative as the main character Vasya, the granddaughter of a swan maiden, deals with serious real-world dangers alongside mythological ones. And where the first book struggles with pacing a little at the end, the second book more than makes up for it.

This is a book that feels like it was written just for me, and indeed I was surprised at so many striking thematic similarities between it and my own. Arden and I are clearly similar thinkers, and I cannot recommend the series enough to anyone who loves history, myth, and magical realism.