phooky reviewed Lilith by George MacDonald
Interesting, if not good
3 stars
It's a weird one. It's nominally a Christian fantasy novel, but it's more Gnostic than anything else. It's the kind of novel in which the narrator is invited to literally lay down and die about twenty pages in. It can't quite make up its mind whether its worldbuilding is allegorical or literal. Much of the writing is labored and confused. There is purple, adoring, faintly sexual prose about horses and leopards. Strange beasts erupt from the sand-- are they direct representations of sin, or just weird-ass alien monsters? In the end, it puts forth a very specific theology, one which on one hand offers salvation to everyone, but predicates everything on submission. Not sure how I feel about this one, but it was an interesting read and worth a mull or two.
