Thomas the Rhymer

Thomas the Rhymer is Ellen Kushner's novel of the old Scottish ballad about a thirteenth century minstrel carried off by the Queen of Elfland. Her Thomas is a harper, carefree, charming and very pleased with himself. He turns up at the croft of an elderly couple, Gavin and Meg, charms them with stories of the court and his conquests, and makes himself a kind of son to them. He also starts courting their young neighbor, Elspeth. Then he vanishes.

The Queen of Elfland has taken him as her lover, and he serves her for seven years without aging, under strict conditions: he may speak only to her and eat only what she gives him. She is beautiful and whimsical, and she can be merciless. He wins a contest of riddles against her brother, Hunter, and when she releases him she sends him home with gifts of prophecy and a tongue that cannot lie. Back in the human world he has to relearn his art and find his way back to Elspeth, whose hard years without him have made her wary, and the compulsion to tell the truth makes everything harder. They marry, and the book follows them to the end of Thomas's life, with a final turn that changes how the whole story looks.

Kushner gives each of the four parts a different narrator, speaking in the first person: Gavin, then Thomas himself in Elfland, then Meg, and finally Elspeth. The first part is written in a rustic voice that the reviewer Russ Allbery found a little awkward, but the book warms as it goes, and he singled out the ending, whose final five paragraphs make a reader rethink every relationship in the book. Reviewers split sharply. Publishers Weekly praised "a happy blend of discreet scholarship and literary style," while Kirkus found it "drab and unmagical." It suits readers who love ballads and fairy tales, and anyone who prefers a quiet, intimate fantasy to an epic one.