Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women (version 2)
Author: first_name: George
last_name: MacDonald
Language: English
Year: 1858

An author who means to end a story with some variation of “And they all lived happily ever after” had better deal before that point not just with evil, strife, and terror but also with loss, failure, sacrifice, and death—or the ending will not be credible. And since such negative experiences do not easily lead to happy endings, only the best story-tellers succeed. George MacDonald is one of these.<br></br>His protagonist, Anodos, discovers on the day he comes of age a path leading into an altern