Cabell is a bit of an acquired taste but once you get used to the scent and flavor you want to keep coming back. Imagine Mark Twain writing fantasy and you are close to the idea. Cabell's oeuvre was the saga of Dom Manuel who's mother on her death bed him to "make a figure of himself in the world." The idiot strove to do just that, out of clay, bronze, sand, and glass; you get the idea. His picaresque adventures and conquests lead him to become legendary, saintly, messianic, despite being ugly, crippled, a letch, and not very bright. Through uncanny good luck he departs this mortal coil a veritable god. That's all in Figures of Earth. In The Silver Stallion and 22 odd novels, stories, and poems Cabell tells of the world that the fool begets.

Stallion is the second novel in the "series" and tells the story of the breakup of Manuel's Fellowship of the Silver Stallion, sort of Cabell's Knights of the Round Table with Dom as the departed Arthur.

Ribald, witty, smart, dirty, blasphemous, and deliciously wordy the fate of the Fellowship as they go their separate ways is told in ten delicious "books" of mock gospel. Full of euphemism, double entendres, the prose is just a delight.

This is the third Cabell I've read and I can't recommend it highly enough. ( )

Part of the Biography of Manuel the redeemer of Poictesme, fairly engaging. It tells of what happened to the companions of Manuel's prosperity. ( )

Cabell’s The Silver Stallion is a cycle of novellas set against a backdrop of adventure and magic, after the manner of Camelot. It’s also: a commentary on the Christ myth (simultaneously sincere and satirical); a meditation on mortality, or more precisely on aging and forgetting; and an outline of Cabell’s own framing mythology (the Biography of Manuel), showing how Manuel’s life and actions took on mythical status after his passing, and exploring the implications for companions and community. A facet of that framing myth is the life of Jurgen, a side character here but given star treatment in Cabell’s most popular novel. So there’s a lot going on, though each story is easily appreciated on its own, for humour and fantastic settings as much as for Cabell’s metaphysical and social musings.

As in Cream of the Jest, these stories are told in a dry, naturalist style, a far cry from the fantasy of Disney, or Rowling, or online RPGs. Most of the magic occurs off-stage, and is remarked as matter-of-factly as a hedge or the day of the week. No dramatic fireballs or tense standoffs between battling wizards. The fanciful names appear to be a creative admixture of Old English, Old French, Latin, all tweaked by Cabell’s own predilections, and superior to most writers this side of Tolkien. Cabell’s language and turn of phrase, in fact, are as much a reason to read the book as the stories themselves.

Well worth dipping into again, whether from beginning to end or just to read a single story. ( )

Always a good read. ( )

This is not a novel. It is not a romance. It is a collection of short stories carrying on a story from the first in the conceived fictional timeline, "Figures of Earth." These are some of Cabell's most fantastic tales, and the book is one of his best. This edition (Ballantine Adult Fantasy, 1969; reprint of the Storisende edtion), even at inflated scarcity-based prices, is justified by the tale of Donander, the ninth tale included, and the most cosmically comic. Cabell's invention was unmatched by any other's, and his prose beats all contenders. ( )