Time and the Gods: 3
The Sword of Welleran: 3.5
A Dreamer's Tales:3.5
The Book of Wonder: 3.5
Tales of Wonder: 3.5
The Gods of Pegana: 3 ( )

I've read bad books. I've read boring books. But it's rare to read a book where I have no idea what the heck happened. This is the book to read when your high on drugs or drunk. Some older books are books of there time. This book is just nuts. The only thing I can remember about this book is wanting to buy a bottle of wine and hoping I wake up and somehow got to the last page. ( )

Then along the torchlit corridors the King went to his chamber, and having shut the door in the empty room, beheld suddenly a figure wearing the cloak of a prophet; and the King perceived that it was he whose face was hidden at the banquet, who had not revealed his name.
And the King said:
'Art thou, too, a prophet?'
And the figure answered:
'I am a prophet.'
And the King said: 'Knowest thou aught concerning the journey of the King?' And the figure answered: 'I know, but have never said.'
And the King said: 'Who art thou that knowest so much and hast not told it?'
And he answered:
'I am THE END.'
Then the cloaked figure strode away from the palace, and the King, unseen by the guards, followed upon his journey.

The book "Time and the Gods" in the Fantasy Masterworks series contains six collections of Lord Dunsany's short stories. I have just finished the first of them, which is also called "Time and the Gods". The stories were more like mythology than fantasy, having quite a detached air about them, and more atmosphere than plot. ( )

The Gods of Pegāna
Descriptions of the gods of Pegāna with a few tales about the prophets at the end. The style is haunting, magical, despite the almost complete lack of any narrative in the first half. I don't know why the omnibus edition puts this collection at the end when it was the first written.

Time and the Gods
I think this omnibus edition does the stories a disservice. It is too rich a diet of a magical prose style totally unrelated to the world as we experience it coupled with shifts from story to story with no connections between them. I've put it too one side to be continued later after reading something a bit more mundane.

The Sword of Welleran
The stories in this third collection were much more narratively straight forward, which made them easier to read. I particularly enjoyed "The Highwayman", "The Fall of Babbelkund", and the title story.

A Dreamer's Tales
I still like the style and the general atmosphere. "Where the Tides Ebb and Flow" was probably my favourite from this collection.

The Book of Wonders
The title just about sums it up.

The Last Book of Wonders
More like a book of tall tales. No real wonders, just some amusing stories set in a world which isn't quite ours. ( )

Superb fantasy. If anyone doubts his influence, then without Dunsany we would have had no Arthur Clarke, Jack Vance or Lovecraft. As another reviewer noted, it's long. That's because it's SIX books squashed together, and they date from the Edwardian era when people made time to read, and didn't rush about so much (they probably had a servant to it for them).

Unemcumbered by footnotes, Dunsany's only use of one was to elucidate the meaning of the word "gluttered": see any dictionary, but in vain. ( )