The Wood Beyond the World

It's horribly boringly written. It feels like William Morris was trying to be very medieval and epic, and... sigh it wasn't poetic and beautiful, it was boring, tedious, irritating.The story itself... A boy is married to a beautiful woman who is unfaithful and he loses everything, and goes away and never comes back. He finds an even more beautiful woman, and becomes a king of a faraway place, and... sigh sigh sighI kept expecting the heroine to be a villain, and the villain to be a heroine, and I really cannot understand why — killed —, and... I mean they didn't even love that one. I don't understand why all these people loved this book, or story. It's seriously just a very bad version of fairytales, especially those from [b:The Arabian Nights 93101 The Arabian Nights Anonymous https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1617241455l/93101.SY75.jpg 859375]. Read those instead. Oh, and the style reminds me of [a:Edgar Rice Burroughs 10885 Edgar Rice Burroughs https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1207155710p2/10885.jpg] (Read him instead)I don't like anything about this book... well... the design is nice, I suppose.The hero is irritating, boring milksop, full of himself. I think we are supposed to see him as something positive. The heroine is... I suppose there's some promise in her. The witch mistress is... mostly confusing. I seriously don't understand why she is supposed to be so scary, when she never really does anything scary. She just says things and Looks. Frankly, the only reason we have to believe she's evil is that the heroine says she is. The prince is an a-hole, though we are to believe he's a good guy. He is totally fine raping the heroine. It's not rape if she is a slave. It's not rape if she says “yes”, even though you threaten to harm her if she refuses. It's not rape if she's pretty. The racist caricature is basically nothing more than that. Nobody has any character development, or any consequences for their actions. I don't think William Morris really understood fairytales at all.The way the people choose their kings is... WTF? I am kind of impressed by the Bear People episode.