Readercon notes and book review: Lud-in-the-Mist

Probably most of you who would want to read Lud-In-The-Mist already have and are like "Wait what, Rachel just read Lud-In-The-Mist for the first time? Seriously?" But just in case, here's a review. Before I start, though:

• Readercon is July 9-12 in Burlington, MA; you should totally come if you're into speculative fiction or talking about books. (I actually read speculative fiction because of Readercon, rather than vice versa.)
• I'll be giving a talk called "When The World Ends, And Nobody Notices" that will focus on nineweaving 's Cloud & Ashes and Chris Adrian's The Children's Hospital. You should all come! Also, if you have any suggestions for other books that might fit the theme, let me know. My pre-Readercon reading list is only like four books right now, I can handle more? Maybe?
• I may also be doing other things; I'll keep you all posted.
• I read two other books over the weekend and hope to get to at least short reviews over the next week or two.

Anyway, Lud-In-The-Mist, by Hope Mirlees, first published in 1926. The edition I bought off of Amazon was terrible; titles of books were marked like _this_ as if the whole thing were a printout of a Usenet conversation, there was no front or back matter at all, the image on the front was pixellated, the font was bad, and I couldn't even find the name of a publisher. And by page twenty or so, I didn't care. All of my experience in the fantasy genre has been post-Tolkien and generally derivative; I found that most fantasies I read (this was way back in high school) offered me less than Lord of the Rings without offering me much that was new. Reading Cloud & Ashes, I felt that some of the things there had just sprung up out of whole cloth, that Greer had woven them out of nothing and created an entirely new mythscape. Well, she has, but she had some guiding lights I didn't know about. :) One of them must have been Hope Mirrlees.

( I guess there are spoilers here, though they are really rather mild. )

Someone really needs to do a nice reprinting of this book, if they haven't already.