Circus of Dr Lao

I’ve been thinking of buying this and have seen a lot of positive feedback on the books’ design. I am, however, looking for feedback on the book itself. Online reviews are a mixed bag. Not sure if I would even order a book now, as it would have to be international, but miss the quest of discovering a new book and looking into whether to add to my collection or not 🙂

It is a tall volume, so make sure your shelves can handle it! :)

>1 RRCBS:

I have long claimed, with some accuracy, that I am not a fan of speculative fiction, fantasy and sci-fi; despite that, I am very fond of this book and of the Limited Editions Club version of it, perhaps my favorite post-Macy Limited Editions Club. This probably is due to a great degree to having seen the film version "The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao" as a juvenile, and being very impressed. When I read the book several decades later, I was much more impressed by the satirical aspect of the story than by the elements of fantasy. Van Vliet's illustrations are very different from the ones Boris Artzybasheff did for the novel's first edition, but I like them just as much and the production values of the Limited Editions Club are far superior.

The Circus of Dr. Lao is one of my all time favorite books. There's just not much fantasy like it being written today. This was published before the Hobbit, before the confines of the genre became a little more defined, and in my mind has more in common with the weird fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith and Lord Dunsany- full as it is of obscure, far-away lands, weird creatures/ deities, and pagan rituals. There's also a hint of Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino in these half spun yarns of sea monsters and mermaids, and the meta-fictional way in which Finney wraps up the book (don't skip the appendix).

I think for a lot of people, they pick up this book with preconceived notions about what a fantasy story involving a circus entails thanks to decades worth of similarly themed works that followed. The Circus of Dr. Lao is like none of them, and that people dislike it because it wasn't what they expected is pretty funny given the story.

After all these recommendations, I have just bought a copy of Dr.Lao. Book cost US$50, postage US$74!!
The joys of living on the opposite side of the planet to most beautiful books are never ending.

>5 wcarter: Great price on the book. Ouch on the shipping price!

After reading all recommendations, I picked up the book and read it. It started very well, and the premise was intriguing; however, I felt that the book did not live up to expectations that it sets up in the first third of it, and the work never really fully developed to its full potential. The end is just outright scrambled, in my opinion.

LEC edition was a pleasure to read though, and I love the illustrations and overall design of the book.