Land of Unreason

Infobox Book |
name = Land of Unreason
title_orig =
translator =


image_caption = Dust-jacket for "Land of Unreason"
author = Fletcher Pratt and L. Sprague deCamp
illustrator =
cover_artist = Boris Artzybasheff
country = United States
language = English
series =
genre = Fantasy novel
publisher = Henry Holt and Company
release_date = 1942
english_release_date =
media_type = Print (Hardback)
pages = 260 pp
isbn = NA
preceded_by =
followed_by =

"Land of Unreason" is a fantasy novel written by Fletcher Pratt and L. Sprague de Camp. It was first published in the fantasy magazine "Unknown Worlds" for October, 1941. Revised and expanded, it was first published in book form by Henry Holt and Company in 1942. It has been reprinted numerous times since by various publishers, most notably by Ballantine Books in January 1970 as the tenth volume of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series. It has also been translated into Italian.

Plot

Fred Barber, an American staying as a guest in an English country home during World War II, consumes a bowl of milk left as an offering for the fairies, substituting liquor in its place. The rightful recipient of the offering, drunk and offended at the substitution, takes vengeance by kidnapping Barber off to the Land of Faerie as a changeling, a fate normally reserved for infants. He finds Faerie beset by a menace echoing the war in his own world. Trapped in a magical realm where rationality as he knows it is turned upside-down and failure to follow the rules can have dire consequences, Barber undertakes a quest in the service of Oberon, the fairy king, in order to be returned to his own world. The outcome, befitting a realm in which nothing is as expected, is one that neither he nor the reader anticipates, for Fred Barber is not quite the man he thinks he is...

References

*cite book | last=Bleiler | first=Everett | authorlink=Everett F. Bleiler | title=The Checklist of Fantastic Literature | location=Chicago | publisher=Shasta Publishers | pages=226 | date=1948
*cite book | last=Laughlin | first=Charlotte | coauthors=Daniel J. H. Levack | title=De Camp: An L. Sprague de Camp Bibliography | location=San Francisco | publisher=Underwood/Miller | pages=70 | date=1983