The Princess and the Goblin (1872)

George MacDonald was greatly admired by C.S. Lewis. His children's fiction shares with Lewis's the quality of having strong (sometimes overly strong) religious metaphors. Fortunately, that was not the case in The Princess and The Goblin. Although there are elements that could be interpreted as religious metaphors, the story is, for the most part, a charming and entertaining fairy tail. What is more present are charming little moral comments; the story is written as if it is being read to children, so there are often bits along the lines of "and the Princess felt bad that she could not keep her promise, because true princesses cannot live with a broken promise". The Princess and the Golbin was a cute, entertaining story. ( )

The Princess and the Goblin is a classic fantasy tale for children that influenced JRR Tolkien. Read my review here.

https://www.johncadamsreviews.com/single-post/the-princess-and-the-goblin-by-geo...

#GeorgeMacDonald #goblins #fiction #fantasy #JohnCAdamsReviews #JohnCAdams #WayBackWhensday #book #books #bookreview #bookreviews ( )

For my full, non-spoiler review: https://christianlovingbooks.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-princess-and-goblin-review... ( )

Stories like these are my weakness, I’ll admit. Beautifully written, full of adventure and interesting characters, and a little lesson on the side.
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The plot itself was something I really enjoyed - a really cute story. What totally dragged this book down for me, though, was the narration. The way it was told was somewhat disjointed and got on my nerves when he would reference something and then say "but I'll get to that later" or "that really doesn't matter." It was like when a friend says they know something juicy and then they refuse to tell. So that unfortunately leaves me with some sour feelings about the book. If you can get past that, though, it is actually fairly decent. ( )