Review: Bones of Faerie by Janni Lee Simner
Janni Lee Simner penned a fantastic parallel world to our own in her first YA novel. I am hoping to see more YA titles from her in the future. I didn’t really expect to like this book as much as I did, the cover art had me from hello, and I liked the description of the book but in actuality I expected the same dark Faerie tale you usually get reading these types of novels. What I did get was a blow to my judgmental little fantasy of this book.
Bones of Faerie follows Liza through a quest of sorts. She lives in a town, where Magic is feared, after the Faerie War. Everything in the world as we know it has been destroyed, and the magic lingers on making plants alive and very dangerous. It’s hard to harvest food for Liza’s village and the whole town works together to survive. No outsiders are allowed in and if a baby is born with fey golden hair and magical blue eyes, it is set on a hillside to meet its fate. Liza had a sister succumb to this fate. Her father left her on a hillside to die just hours after birth, after that Liza’s mother leaves without her. Leaving her to her abusive father, around then Liza starts realizing she has magical abilities but thank goodness her hair is still black. She runs away, into the forest and is followed by a boy named Matthew.
Liza later finds out that Matthew has magic of his own and when they are attacked at night by the trees a strange woman finds them and brings them to her village where magic is feared but not illegal. Liza and Matthew learn more about their abilities, while healing.
Liza sets off again followed by Matthew on a quest to find her Mother in Faerie. Tara, badly burned by radiation poisoning is brought by through the worlds by Liza and her gift. I really can’t go into anymore without causing major spoilers for you guys reading, but this book really impressed me. Surprises in books are always the best, some books you read you already know how you are going to feel about them, but this book really knocked my proverbial socks off! I strongly recommend this book to teens and fans of YA writing. The book doesn’t focus on any love story and that made me ecstatically happy also. So dig into the book and then leave me a comment here telling me what you thought. I love discussing books!
Review: The Faerie Path Trilogy One by Frewin Jones
Frewin Jones takes you on a dangerous adventure in current times to an immortal world parallel to our own. The stories in this trilogy start by following Anita, a young girl living in North London as she nears her sixteenth birthday. Anita learns in a round about way she is an immortal princess of Faerie named Tania, her father and mother have been searching for her 500 years and Faerie has been locked in twilight waiting for her to return. Tania is torn between her two worlds her two families and the two men that love her.
Starting with the first book, I ordered them all three at the same time from Amazon because they seemed to be super interesting by reading the descriptions. I started book one and was up half the night reading. I have read Faerie books before, one is even reviewed here on the site but never have I read a Faerie book for adults or teens that was so well put together. Of course since it is a Faerie tale, there is a royal family and the girl in the story finds true love, and finds out she is a princess, but the way Jones puts it all together you don’t feel like you are reading Disney. The books are descriptive in a captivating way. Jones leaves no stone unturned, and leaves little to the imagination, his Immortal Realm belongs to him and he owns and describes it well. What I particularly fancy about these novels, is they are sewn up at the ends. I really dislike a book and abhor trilogies that leave open endings when the author has no intention of picking the story up. Jones delights my little OCD soul by sewing everything up nicely through-out the book and at the end of his novels.
The second book follows Tania through the search of her birth mother,and the betrayal of one of her six sisters, while trying to placate her mortal parents and figure out her own feelings about being of two worlds. You learn a lot in this book about Eden the mysterious sister who banned herself to a tower when the Queen disappeared from Faerie, to me this is my favorite of the three for that fact alone. Each of the six sisters has a magical gift and each of the six sisters is given an amazingly strong personality by Jones. I relate more to Sancha who has a gift related to reading and books, Zara has a gift for music that comes in handy more than you would think the author could incorporate, Cordelia can talk to animals, Hopie can heal and has a knowledge of herbs, Tania can step between the veil of the worlds, Rathina’s gift is only revealed in the last pages of the third novel so I won’t spoil that for you.
The third book describes a war in the realm. It does so in a way you are reminded of the Lord of the Rings but not in the long winded over exerted, need to have complete silence to keep up and comprehend it all Tolkien way. The sisters get to really show their warrior side and the descriptions of the violence and what is going on in Faerie are mind blowing. I was sad when I finished the last page of the last book, disappointed that there was no more to read. I know there is a fourth book coming but I have the understanding that it is not Tania’s family that will be followed. I recommend picking these books up and reading them. I know I immensely enjoyed reading them, I have a feeling because I haven’t read many male authors in this genre and the fact the book didn’t hover on the love story and wasn’t sappy at all had a big part to play in my love for the series.
Review: Tithe (A Modern Faerie Tale), by Holly Black
Holly Black from Spiderwick Chronicles fame, had quite a break out novel with Tithe. I read the book over a couple of days and while I wasn’t immensely immersed in the novel, it wasn’t so bad that I threw it down in disgust either. It was a simple read, with an easy plot line to follow, no graphic sexual texts, although the book does reference the subject with innuendo.
The story follows a changeling named Kaye who has no idea that she is a Faerie herself, finally finds out the truth about her origins and why she felt like she just didn’t fit in. Kaye had always seen the ‘folk’ as they were called, she just didn’t know she was about to be a lot more linked to Faerie’s than she had been as a small child.
Kaye’s Mom was a rock and roll chick who fronts a band, she couldn’t tell Kaye much about her dad except that it was a drunken night on tour that created her. I really liked Black’s vision of Kaye as a naturally blond, Asian chick. The description kind of stays with you throughout the novel, when so many times the description of a character is lost or just doesn’t stay in your brain for the whole reading of the book. A night gone wrong at her Mom’s gig, sends them home to Grandma’s in Jersey. Kaye was excited to get back to her Faerie friends from her childhood.
