Didn’t realize this was a sequel to another book, would not have requested if I had known. Just not for me, dnf.

Muriel Barbery's novel, A Strange Country (translated from the French by Alison Anderson) is the sequel to her previous book, The Life of Elves. Both are rather poetic works, and some passages are quite wonderful. In essence, this is a quest book: soldiers fighting in a war in our familiar world are approached by Petrus, who leads them over a magical bridge to the elven world where they try to stop Aelius, the elf responsible for the wars in both the human and the elven worlds.

This is not a straightforward story, but rather one with much backtracking and sidetracking, which is necessary to explain both the characters and the pasts that have shaped them. Some readers will find this bothersome, as the plot meanders at times, interrupted by philosophical questions and musings, and poetry. I found it interesting and enjoyed the book overall, but not everyone will be as taken with it as I was.

Elves and mists and bridges between worlds and battles and poetry, this fairy tale fable has it all, with humans and elves fighting a common enemy against the everlasting conflict between good and evil. There’s probably a deep allegorical meaning to ferret out from the overwritten florid prose but I wasn’t engaged or invested enough to fathom out any possible philosophical meaning. Just not for me, this (admittedly imaginative) whimsical fantasy.

This book, I didn’t realize, is a follow up to the author’s Lives of Elves. And, as such, I would recommend to readers who have read that one, but this is not a solid stand alone. I enjoyed the author’s Elegance of the Hedgehog, but this novel left me wanting. The POV was muddled here and the ending devolved into purple prose and was unsatisfying.

When the first glass was emptied, Alejandro and Petrus smiled at each other and Jesus noticed the redhead's lovely grey and pensive eyes.
"Where did you come from?" he asked.
"From the bridge," Petrus answered. "The bridge that links our world to yours."
Then, after a silence:
"It is invisible to you."

Alejandro de Yepes and Jesus Rocamora, young officers in the Spanish regular army, are stationed alone at Castillo when, out of nowhere, a friendly redhead appears to them in the cellar. There is something magnetic and deeply mysterious about this Petrus. Alejandro and Jesus are bewitched, and, in the middle of the sixth year of the longest war humankind has ever endured, they abandon their post to follow him across a bridge only he can see.

Petrus brings them to a world of lingering fog, strange beings, poetry, music, natural wonders, harmony, and extraordinary beauty. This is where the fate of the world and all its living creatures is decided. Yet this world too is under threat. A long battle against the forces of disenchantment is drawing to a climactic close. Will poetry and beauty prevail over darkness and death? And what role will Alejandro and Jesus play? Muriel Barbery's new richly imagined novel, the sequel to The Life of Elves, will transport readers to a lost world exposed to the constant churn of civilizations and remind them of the power of poetry and imagination.