A rousing series opener enabled by an adorable cast and a superb trove of faerie folklore.
This YA fantasy, by two contributors to the Sound & Fury: Shakespeare Goes Punk (2015) short story anthology, features a teenager who doesn’t know that she’s secretly a faerie princess.
High schooler Megan O’Reilly lives with her mother in Seattle. She often wonders about her parents’ earlier lives as rock musicians and about the fact that her father left while she was a baby. She sets timers to remind her throughout the day to take pills for her ADHD, which causes her to furiously doodle. One day, while she’s studying math, her best friend, Lani Kahale, tries to discuss something important with her. Megan puts the conversation off and later finds a crow by her mailbox. Closer inspection reveals that butterfly wings seem to adorn the crow’s back—but they actually belong to a pixie named Ashling. The pixie and her feathered mount, named Count, secretly replaced some of Megan’s medication with vitamin C, making her more receptive to seeing the fae. Megan soon learns that Lani is half Menehune (a Hawaiian gnome) and that her own father, Ric O’Reilly, is the king of the faerie realm. With the additional help of a Satyress named Cassia and a Brownie named Kerr, Megan travels to the court of Queen Orlaith, who recruits her to find the missing Ric and go on a quest to help preserve the seasonal changes on Earth. Cook and Perkins begin this first book of the Fair Folk Chronicles series with steady fantasy beats that should appeal to fans of Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, and even older classics, such as T.H. White’s The Once and Future King (1958). The authors provide tight pacing and deft characterization as Megan and her companions—a group that eventually includes a time-lost knight named Justin—survive terrain filled with iron golems and other creatures. Cook and Perkins offer clever, clear fantasy logic; when the Sword of Light, for example, “falls out of use, whatever else happens to it, it always hides itself behind challenges, to make sure its next wielder is worthy of it.” Emotionally, the finale provides a gentle landing, leaving room for complexity to build in subsequent volumes.
A rousing series opener enabled by an adorable cast and a superb trove of faerie folklore.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5118-3444-5
Page Count: 196
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
At Buckkeep in the Six Duchies, young Fitz, the bastard son of Prince Chivalry, is raised as a stablehand by old warrior Burrich. But when Chivalry dies without legitimate issue—murdered, it's rumored—Fitz, at the orders of King Shrewd, is brought into the palace and trained in the knightly and courtly arts. Meanwhile, secretly at night, he receives instruction from another bastard, Chade, in the assassin's craft. Now, King Shrewd's subjects are imperiled by the visits of the Red-Ship Raiders—formidable warriors who pillage the seacoasts and turn their human victims into vicious, destructive zombies. Since rehabilitating the zombies proves impossible, it's Fitz's task to go abroad covertly and kill them as quickly and humanely as possible. Shrewd orders that Fitz be taught the Skill—mental powers of telepathy and coercion possessed by all those of the royal line; his teacher is Galen, a sadistic ally of the popinjay Prince Regal, who hates Fitz all the more for his loyalty to Shrewd's other son, the stalwart soldier Verity. Galen brutalizes Fitz and, unknown to anyone, implants a mental block that prevents Fitz from using the Skill. Later, Shrewd decrees that, to cement an alliance, Verity shall wed the Princess Kettricken, heir to a remote yet rich mountain kingdom. Verity, occupied with Skillfully keeping the Red-Ship Raiders at bay, can't go to collect his bride, so Regal and Fitz are sent. Finally, Fitz must discover the depths of Regal's perfidy, recapture his true Skill, win Kettricken's heart for Verity, and help Verity defeat the Raiders. An intriguing, controlled, and remarkably assured debut, at once satisfyingly self-contained yet leaving plenty of scope for future extensions and embellishments.
Pub Date: April 17, 1995
ISBN: 0-553-37445-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Spectra/Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
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