[The stories in Kingdoms of Elfin] are fairy stories…. The elfin kingdoms over or underlie (mostly under, because they tend to be subterranean) Europe, and their inhabitants share the traditionally accepted characteristics of their human counterparts. Thus the elfins of the Kingdom of Wirre Gedanken … are given to metaphysical speculation; on the English side of the Scottish border the fairies are comparatively uncouth and deplorably indifferent to physical comfort; in Elfhame on the Scottish side they are natural theologians; in Ireland they see ghosts, and so on. These are not accidental clichés. You might not think them clichés at all, because they are handled so wittily and unexpectedly: but I think they are and are meant to be, and that the whole book is an attack on accepted thinking….

The Peris of Persia, the stones of Carnac, the Greek gods, Morgan le Fay and King Arthur...