At the very first paragraph of the first book, Vance informs the reader that the Elder Isles sank under the sea at some later time (which, indeed, readers can know for themselves by glancing at the map of Western Europe and finding no such islands off its shore). The Elder Islands are clearly not Atlantis, which was an ancient myth already in the time of Plato – still, the overtones of a land doomed to eventually sink beneath the waves influence the story. All the more so as to the city of Ys, the site of several important events, which has its own Breton myth ending with its being eventually engulfed by the waves.