Aladore by Henry Newbolt

A lovely early 20th century fantasy, it's a lot like William Morris's books (The Well at World's End especially), but I actually liked this better because there's more magic and a wonderful aura of mystery. The language is somewhat pretentiously antiquated, but the imagery is very beautiful and highly poetic and dreamlike. It doesn't really have any sort of coherent plot, it's more just a bunch of meanderings through various adventures, loosely held together by an overarching romance. It reminded me a lot of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (which is my favourite Narnia book), and I really enjoyed it. It has a bit of everything that goes into making up a really good fantasy novel: doppelgangers, invisible cities, weird names, fantastic creatures, mysterious hermits. I'm not sure that it was in any way exceptional, but it's a great read for anyone who enjoys stuff like Phantastes and other early fantasy.