The Garden of Unearthly Delights

✍ Scribed by Rankin, Robert

• Publisher: Random House;Corgi
• Year: 1996;2007
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 158 KB
• Edition: New Edition
• Category: Fiction

✦ Synopsis

HOLD ONTO YOUR HEAD, YOU ARE NOW LEAVING THE AGE OF AQUARIUS.

In a world ruled by magic, one man has to live by his wits alone. That man is Maxwell Karrien and he has been flung forward in time, from our Age into quite another.

For human history is composed of Ages. The Stone Age. The Iron Age. The Bronze Age. And later, The Age of Reason, The Age of Steam and The Age of Technology. But no-one was expecting that The Age of Technology would unexpectedly come to an end, to be replaced by The Age of Magic.

An Age of heroes and heroines, magic and myth, wizardry and wonder.

So Maxwell - now Max Carrion, Imagineer - is plunged into a world of Reg-Varney-worshipping cargo-cultists, camp knights, gorgeous news-crumpet, cricket-playing animal gods and hidden cities, and sets out to make his way in this new world with some mystification, but not without good intentions. The problem is, as ever it was, that the man with good intentions can so often really screw things up. With hilarious consequences. And when Maxwell finds himself forced by an evil soul-stealing magician to embark upon an esoteric quest, the potential for disastrous mis-adventures is given full head.

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The Garden of Unearthly Delights is Robert Rankins loving homage to the Dying Earth novels of Jack Vance: novels that greatly influenced the young Rankin when he read them as a child in the 1950s.

Although now recognised to be a classic in the fields of both Far Fetched Fiction and Science Fantasy, The Garden of Unearthly Delights was initially disliked by Rankins then publisher and unappreciated by critics, who were taken aback by the authors foray into Fantasy Fiction. However the author considers it to be one of the best books he has ever written and upon preparing the typescript for publication as an ebook, he found little or nothing that he wished to change and being the big old softy that he is, he even had a little cry at the end.

It is to be hoped that at last this little-known masterpiece (Under-rated book by an under-rated author - 5-star review by A. Customer, amazon.co.uk) will receive the wider audience and appreciation that it so rightly deserves, and if you dont believe us, check out the books other 5-star reviews right here on amazon!

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Review

"'Rankin does for England what Spike Milligan does for Ireland. There can be no higher praise'" * Mail on Sunday *

From the Publisher

What they say about Robert Rankin:

'Oscar Wilde meets Kurt Vonnegut in the genetics lab of classic fantasy genius.' - SFX Magazine

'Stark Raving Genius.' - Observer