Friday, September 1, 2023

Book Review: Outland

 Title: Outland

Author: Mary Austin

Date: 1919

Publisher: Boni & Liveright

ISBN: none

Quote: “There were some other landmarks I was quite as sure of at the time, but the creek makes so many turns here I could never find them again.”

I downloaded this book from Gutenberg.org. If you’re online, you can read, print, or download it too, paying only printing expenses. If you’re not, I’ll print a copy for you at cost.

It’s a fantasy—not the “high” Tolkien variety. Mona, the narrator, and Herman, her fiancĂ©, go for a walk in the woods and encounter two mysterious tribes of primitive people who are quarrelling with each other over a legendary buried treasure. Taken hostage, they get to know the tribesmen just well enough to regret what happens to them in the end.

Though Austin describes her “Outlanders” in ways that suggest that they strayed into North America from Europe, she gives them customs, like the memory-erasing potion, drawn from Native American traditions.


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