There is no question that George MacDonald (not to be confused with Flashman author George MacDonald Fraser) was a major influence on modern fantasy - especially those corners of the fantasy market influenced by Christianity. After all, he influenced C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, David Lindsay, Madeleine l'Engel and G.K. Chesterton, and there isn't a single fantasy author writing after the 1950s who wasn't influenced by a member of that remarkable crew. I am glad that MacDonald wrote Lilith, and I'm glad that those authors read it.

I wonder, however, whether it's especially important to read it now. Naturally, anybody who's keen on the history of the fantasy genre is going to be interested, and should probably look over it. But if you just want a good read, then you're going to have problems.

Here's the thing with MacDonald: he isn't actually very good at prose. His grasp of pacing is shoddy. To a large extent he is working out issues relating to his upbringing in a Calvinist family, as well as his own personal religious beliefs (which actually seem to be the opposite of Calvinism - in the cosmology of Lilith, everybody sooner or later repents and comes to God, after death if not before, although it can require their situation to become more and more and more bleak until they eventually crack and give in to the Lord); while this does mean that weighty and important questions are addressed, it also means that the answers to those questions can put your teeth on edge if you don't agree with them. The pacing and prose are a serious flaw, and the theological meandering can sometimes get bogged down in poor Socratic dialogues, and all of these problems are evident very early on in the book.

Readers of Dan's excellent article will be forgiven for jumping to the conclusion that MacDonald is a 19th Century J.K. Rowling, but them Inklings were no fools: Lewis and Tolkien definitely saw something in this book, and so I persevered to the end and found that there was actually quite a good story hidden away in here. Lilith follows Mr Vane, as he is led by a raven who is also Adam, the first man, and who is also the aged librarian of his family home, through a mirror in his attic into another world, where the things of the spirit are made flesh. (Prayers appear as doves, for example.) Adam is trying to encourage Mr Vane to lie down along with all of the dead people in Adam and Eve's house, where the repentant dead wait for their bodily resurrection. Mr Vane, quite reasonably, refuses, and so must suffer for a while before he gets another chance. Blundering through this fantasy landscape he eventually finds the town of Bulika, where the fallen angel Lilith rules.

It's in Bulika where the story really snared me. Lilith is a terrifying creation who reminded me of the Witch Witch of Narnia (and was probably the inspiration for her), and MacDonald nicely manages to reconcile the horrifying nature of Lilith's rule with the citizenry's adoration of her. The real meat of the story lies in Vane's encounter with Lilith, and his eventual overthrow of her rule. There is then a concluding segment in which Lilith at long last repents, as does Vane, and both go to their age-long slumber in the house of the dead.

The difficulty with the pacing is as follows: it's around 100 pages before Vane gets to Bulika. The conclusion lasts for about 50 pages. This leaves 100 pages of the novel in which I was seriously enjoying myself: MacDonald spends far too long establishing the situation (I'm not convinced the framing story set in Vane's mansion in our world is needed at all) and keeps writing long after he should have stopped. The early discussions between Vane and Mr Raven/Adam are more infuriating than they are mysterious, and the long drawn-out conclusion becomes nigh-distasteful in the exaltation of death.

MacDonald succeeds where Rowling fails, however, and this is primarily because he is still writing from a religious perspective. The emphasis on the harmlessness of death isn't disturbing when it's clear that the "death" discussed in the novel represents the calm acceptance of the authority of God over your life and a repentance of one's former sin; it is disturbing when suicide is presented as a smart tactical move designed to undermine the Dark Lord's power. More generally, MacDonald's fantasy world works on a religious-magical worldview, where the personal spiritual status of an individual has an impact on how they experience the world; Rowling's magic essentially operates on a scientific worldview - if the wizarding gene is dominant, you're a wizard, and if you're a wizard you can always get the same effect simply by waving your want like so and saying something in Latin. It is no surprise that MacDonald is regarded as a great innovator.

That said, it is a chore to read him. My edition of Lilith has an introduction by C.S. Lewis, in which he says that Lilith is probably poor literature, but excellent myth-making. Myths, to Lewis, aren't about the precise words with which they are told, but are about the ideas and impressions they convey, and the way they resonate with people on a deep level: it doesn't matter precisely which version of the story of, say, Theseus and the Minotaur you read, because it's the myth which is really significant, not the telling of it.

The counter-argument, of course, is that if it isn't important which retelling of a particular myth you read, you may as well pick the best telling available, not necessarily the original expression of that story. I mentioned that the character of Lilith reminds me of the White Witch; the White Witch, however, does not remind me of Lilith, because the White Witch is actually a superior presentation of the same concept - an evil, unrepentant ice-queen whose selfishness has blighted everybody around her. There is no reason for anyone to read Lilith who hasn't read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, since the main reason to read Lilith is to understand Lewis's (and others') influences as opposed to enjoying it in its own right. The writing is slightly too weak for it to be enjoyed on its own.