Lilith

English language

Published May 22, 1895 by Chatto & Windus.

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3 stars (1 review)

Lilith is a fantasy novel by Scottish writer George MacDonald, first published in 1895. It was reprinted in paperback by Ballantine Books as the fifth volume of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series in September 1969.Lilith is considered among the darkest of MacDonald's works, and among the most profound. It is a story concerning the nature of life, death, and salvation. In the story, MacDonald mentions a cosmic sleep that heals tortured souls, preceding the salvation of all. MacDonald was a Christian universalist, believing that all will eventually be saved. However, in this story, divine punishment is not taken lightly, and salvation is hard-won.

2 editions

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.