Book Review: Greenteeth by Molly O’Neill

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Greenteeth
Author: Molly O’Neill
Publisher: Orbit
Publication date: February 25, 2025
Length: 304 pages
Genre: Fantasy
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley
Rating:

From an outstanding new voice in cozy fantasy comes Greenteeth, a tale of fae, folklore, and found family, narrated by a charismatic lake-dwelling monster with a voice unlike any other, perfect for fans of T. Kingfisher.

Beneath the still surface of a lake lurks a monster with needle sharp teeth. Hungry and ready to pounce.

Jenny Greenteeth has never spoken to a human before, but when a witch is thrown into her lake, something makes Jenny decide she’s worth saving. Temperance doesn’t know why her village has suddenly turned against her, only that it has something to do with the malevolent new pastor.

Though they have nothing in common, these two must band together on a magical quest to defeat the evil that threatens Jenny’s lake and Temperance’s family, as well as the very soul of Britain.

Greenteeth, a debut novel from author Molly O’Neill, is a delightful fantasy adventure with a unique main character. Jenny Greenteeth is a water-dwelling fae, inspired by a figure from English folklore. According to Wikipedia, “Jenny Greenteeth” is a river hag, a creature who lives in bodies of water and pulls unsuspecting humans to their deaths.

I wasn’t a human, nor a goblin, nor a high fae. I was Jenny Greenteeth, fangs and claws and unholy strength. I was a nightmare, a scary story, the dark shape glimpsed through the weeds.

Yet the Jenny Greenteeth we come to know is much less malevolent that the tales would have us believe. Yes, she loves to eat all sorts of plants and animals that come into her lake, but she doesn’t threaten, and certainly has never lured the nearby townsfolk into her waters. She enjoys a peaceful life, and thinks fondly of the years she spent with her daughter (also called Jenny, as are all women in her line) before little Jenny went off to a lake of her own.

All this changes when she spots a gathering of humans on her shores, led by a stern man in black. A human woman, bound in manacles, is thrown into the lake to drown. Jenny is interested, rescues the woman, and brings her to her underwater cave to learn more. Temperance is a wife and mother, and has been respected as the village healer (and yes, she is a witch), but never had any trouble with her neighbors until the new pastor came along.

Although Jenny has saved her life, Temperance doesn’t dare return to her home. She’s desperate to get back to her family, but when Jenny suggests that she run away and then send for her husband and children, Temperance is reluctant. She loves her village, and suspects there’s more going on than just a witchhunt. Jenny works with Temperance to try to confront the pastor, and discovers that there’s a powerful evil presence at work, one which they can’t overpower or defeat on their own. Joined by Jenny’s goblin friend Brackus, they set out on a quest to learn how to challenge this evil force, and win.

“A witch, a goblin and Jenny Greenteeth are off to seek the King of the Fairies,” he said. “What a delicious disaster this could be.”

Jenny Greenteeth is a wonderful main character. She’s non-human and clearly has a different moral compass and worldview, yet she shows great compassion and an enormous capacity for loyalty and friendship. As she journeys with Temperance and Brackus, her inner workings repeatedly come into conflict with Temperance’s sense of right and wrong. Seeing them navigate their differences and reach for understanding is fascinating and quite touching.

The quest itself is full of danger and adventure and magical obstacles. To be honest, this is the only element of the story that dragged for me — but quite possibly, I’ve just had my fill of quest stories. The specific challenges the trio face are fine, but never felt impossible to me; I was never in any doubt that they’d find a solution without too much difficulty.

Several scenes take place in the court of the high fae, and these were lovely. There’s a sense of power and magic, but also sorrow: The book repeatedly makes clear that the old ways are fading from the world, and that Jenny and all the fae may soon be remnants of a long-gone past.

The final chapters of the book provide a very satisfying ending, and there are some terrific surprises and twists that I won’t reveal here, other than to say that Jenny’s story ends up intersecting with English folklore and mythology in a wonderful, unexpected way.

Jenny and Temperance are both well-developed, strong characters, and I enjoyed spending time with them very much. Brackus is fun too, but less essential, and I’d didn’t get as good a sense of him as an individual. I loved Jenny’s world and her perspective on life as seen from her lake. I can’t say I’ve come across a character quite like Jenny before.

Greenteeth is a wonderful read, and I’ll look forward to whatever Molly O’Neill writes next!

For more on Greenteeth, check out reviews at:

Books, Bones & Buffy
CJRTB Books

24Jul2024

Book Review: The Lost Story by Meg Shaffer

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: The Lost Story
Author: Meg Shaffer
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Publication date: July 16, 2024
Print length: 352 pages
Genre: Fantasy
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley

Inspired by C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, this wild and wondrous novel is a fairy tale for grown-ups who still knock on the back of wardrobes—just in case—from the author of The Wishing Game.

As boys, best friends Jeremy Cox and Rafe Howell went missing in a vast West Virginia state forest, only to mysteriously reappear six months later with no explanation for where they’d gone or how they’d survived.

Fifteen years after their miraculous homecoming, Rafe is a reclusive artist who still bears scars inside and out but has no memory of what happened during those months. Meanwhile, Jeremy has become a famed missing persons’ investigator. With his uncanny abilities, he is the one person who can help vet tech Emilie Wendell find her sister, who vanished in the very same forest as Rafe and Jeremy.

Jeremy alone knows the fantastical truth about the disappearances, for while the rest of the world was searching for them, the two missing boys were in a magical realm filled with impossible beauty and terrible danger. He believes it is there that they will find Emilie’s sister. However, Jeremy has kept Rafe in the dark since their return for his own inscrutable reasons. But the time for burying secrets comes to an end as the quest for Emilie’s sister begins. The former lost boys must confront their shared past, no matter how traumatic the memories.

Alongside the headstrong Emilie, Rafe and Jeremy must return to the enchanted world they called home for six months—for only then can they get back everything and everyone they’ve lost.

Let’s cut right to the chase: The Lost Story is a break-out 5-star read for me!

I went into this reading adventure without expectations. I hadn’t read the author’s previous novel, and didn’t know a whole lot about The Lost Story, other than blurbs about this being a Narnia for grown-ups.

And yes, that’s kind of true… and it’s also its own wonderful experience entirely.

In The Lost Story, the central mystery focuses on two lost-then-found boys. As teens, Rafe and Jeremy disappeared on a school outing to Red Crow State Forest in West Virginia, only to reappear — suddenly, and without explanation — six months later. For Rafe, the missing months are simply gone from his memory. Jeremy sticks to an undetailed story: they were lost, managed to survive, and then were rescued.

Fifteen or so years later, the boys are men in their mid-thirties. Jeremy has achieved fame as a missing person finder, carrying out seemingly impossible rescues in hopeless situations. Rafe, on the other hand, lives alone in a cabin in the woods, preferring to cut himself off from the world. Jeremy and Rafe have had no contact since their return, despite formerly being best of friends.

They’re brought back into one another’s lives when Emilie contacts Jeremy, asking for help in locating her long-lost sister Shannon — a person Emilie only recently learned even existed. Shannon was lost in the same woods as Jeremy and Rafe, but years earlier, and was long ago presumed dead. But Emilie feels a desperate need to know more. and Jeremy agrees to help her — only if Rafe joins in as well.

As the trio journeys from Red Crow into a magical realm beyond their own, their story hits traditional quest beats while also offering an original take on the magical portal genre. One fascinating element is the fact that the characters are adults. We’ve learned from Narnia and other fantasy classics that children are best suited to these portal journeys — a sense of innocence is essential to crossing over and being being open to the reality of alternate worlds. Seeing adult characters embrace the magic, even while acknowledging the unlikelihood of it all, adds a unique flavor to the tale.

Where to even begin to explain just how wonderful this book is? I don’t want to reveal much up front, but as the synopsis makes clear, there are other worlds involved, and the answers to the mysteries of these disappearances involve magic and otherworldly forces.

When you begin to question your sanity, remind yourself that the fact that something impossible happened doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

There’s joy and sorrow, love and friendship, adventure and danger — all this and more awaits Jeremy, Rafe, and Emilie as they set out on their quest. The quest itself is filled with wonder and beauty, but even more special is the relationships discovered and revealed as the characters move fully into a world beyond their own.

Reading The Lost Story is a beautiful, funny, emotional, transporting experience. I never expected to fall for this book the way I did. I just wish I could live in Jeremy, Rafe, and Emilie’s world a bit longer. Highly recommended.

Now that I’ve read The Lost Story, I’m eager to read the author’s debut novel, The Wishing Game… just as soon as I can fit it into my reading schedule.

Fun side note: After finishing The Lost Story, I read the author bio and discovered that Meg Shaffer is married to author Andrew Shaffer, who has written some supremely silly parodies and novels (including the Obama/Biden mystery books). I can only imagine how entertaining their dinner table conversations must be!

29Jun2023

Book Review: Longshadow (Regency Faerie Tales, #3) by Olivia Atwater

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Longshadow
Series: Regency Faerie Tales #3
Author: Olivia Atwater
Publisher: Orbit
Publication date: August 16, 2022
Length: 263 pages
Genre: Fantasy
Source: Library

Proper Regency ladies are not supposed to become magicians – but Miss Abigail Wilder is far from proper.

The marriageable young ladies of London are dying mysteriously, and Abigail Wilder intends to discover why. Abigail’s father, the Lord Sorcier of England, believes that a dark lord of faerie is involved – but while Abigail is willing to match her magic against Lord Longshadow, neither her father nor high society believe that she is capable of doing so.

Thankfully, Abigail is not the only one investigating the terrible events in London. Mercy, a street rat and self-taught magician, insists on joining Abigail to unravel the mystery. But while Mercy’s own magic is strange and foreboding, she may well post an even greater danger to Abigail’s heart.

From the author of HALF A SOUL comes a queer faerie tale romance full of love and defiant hope. Pick up LONGSHADOW, and return once more to Olivia Atwater’s charming, magical version of Regency England.

Oh dear. I’ll keep this brief: The 3rd book in the Regency Faerie Tales trilogy and I were just not meant to be.

The main character here is Abigail Wilder, the adopted daughter of Lord Elias and Dora Wilder, the central characters from the first book in the series, Half a Soul. In Longshadow, Abigail is now a young adult and a skilled magician. She loves her parents, as well as her Other Mother, Lady Hollowvale — the faerie version of Dora, who has half of Dora’s soul.

Abigail can move in and out of faerie to visit with her other family there, and can also see her brother Hugh, although no one else can — he’s a ghost.

Other than having to put up with the snobby women of the ton, life is mostly pretty good for Abigail, but when other young society women start dying unexpectedly, she’s drawn into investigating the circumstances. As she gets more deeply involved, Abigail encounters a strange woman named Mercy, whose magical gifts are very different than Abigail’s. Mercy encourages Abigail to give her imagination free rein, and together, they explore the unexplained deaths as well the feelings growing between them.

I really did like the first two books in this trilogy, but Longshadow was one long slog for me. The plot just did not come together in a way that made much sense, and frankly, I found the plotline regarding the murders and the involvement of Lord Longshadow and ghosts not wanting to cross over all very confusing — and not in a fun, “can’t wait to figure this out” sort of way.

Mostly, I was just frustrated. Mercy feels unknowable, and the relationship between Mercy and Abigail feels more like checking a box than anything with true feelings involved. Definitely not enough Elias and Dora, and while Euphemia and Jubilee (from book #2) make an appearance, they don’t actually get much to do — it feels more like a cameo for the sake of seeing them than anything more substantive.

I really had to force myself to finish this book. I’m glad I did, since I would have wondered about the wrap-up of the trilogy otherwise, but all in all, I did not have a particularly good time with Longshadow.

13Jun2023

Book Review: Ten Thousand Stitches (Regency Faerie Tales, #2) by Olivia Atwater

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Ten Thousand Stitches
Series: Regency Faerie Tales #2
Author: Olivia Atwater
Publisher: Orbit
Publication date: July 19, 2022
Length: 250 pages
Genre: Fantasy
Source: Library

Regency housemaid Euphemia Reeves has acquired a faerie godfather. Unfortunately, he has no idea what he’s doing.

Effie has most inconveniently fallen in love with the dashing Mr Benedict Ashbrooke. There’s only one problem; Effie is a housemaid, and a housemaid cannot marry a gentleman. It seems that Effie is out of luck until she stumbles into the faerie realm of Lord Blackthorn, who is only too eager to help Effie win Mr Ashbrooke’s heart. All he asks in return is that Effie sew ten thousand stitches onto his favourite jacket.

Effie has heard rumours about what happens to those who accept help from faeries, but life as a maid at Hartfield is so awful that she is willing to risk even her immortal soul for a chance at something better. Now, she has one hundred days – and ten thousand stitches – to make Mr Ashbrooke fall in love and propose. . . if Lord Blackthorn doesn’t wreck things by accident, that is. For Effie’s greatest obstacle might well prove to be Lord Blackthorn’s overwhelmingly good intentions.

From the author of HALF A SOUL comes a whimsical fantasy romance with a Cinderella twist. Pick up TEN THOUSAND STITCHES, and dive into another enchanting faerie tale set in Olivia Atwater’s charming, magical version of Regency England!

In Ten Thousand Stitches, we meet hardworking housemaid Euphemia Reeves, who toils day and night to do the bidding of the awful Lady Culver. The work is never-ending and exhausting, and whenever a servant leaves (or is fired), the others simply must pick up the slack. Effie is tired, and she’s angry too — she and her friends below stairs are, at best, viewed as part of the furniture. When Lady Culver learns that a rival now has French maids, she decrees that her own maids must be French too, and promptly gives them all new names. Effie is furious — the servants count for so little that even their names are not their own.

But when Effie meets Benedict, the younger brother of Lord Culver, her world shifts sharply. He initially mistakes her for a lady, and wows her with his brief attention and kindness. Of course, later as she’s serving at a fancy ball, he looks right past her and doesn’t recognize her at all. Effie is sure that this is the man she loves, and she feels in her heart that if only she were a lady, he’d love her too.

Enter Lord Blackthorn. The kind-hearted faerie has become enamored with the idea of English virtue, and has been told that the way to attain English virtue is by helping the helpless and punishing the wicked. Who could be more helpless than downtrodden Effie? Lord Blackthorn offers her a glamour by which she’ll look and sound like a lady, and soon she finds herself moving in polite society, gaining the attention of the upper crust and getting closer and closer to Benedict’s heart.

But the more Effie sees, the more she questions her goals and desires. It also turns out that there’s a hint of magic in her fine sewing — when she sews, she imbues her stitches with her emotions… and given how angry she’s been, soon there’s a plague of anger amongst the servants.

In the world of Ten Thousand Stitches, anger is a good thing, because it leads to action. In fact, what we have here is a labor movement! Thanks to the anger Effie inadvertently spreads, the workers of the household reach the boiling point and then some, and ultimately demand action. It’s quite fun to see organized labor in a fantasy story!

The faerie tale elements work well, and while the outcome is expected, it’s quite a lark to see how we get there. Effie is a terrific main character, and I appreciate the author’s spotlight on class divisions in the world of fairy tale romances. As the author points out in her notes at the end, fairy tales with downtrodden main characters often reveal that the heroine is really a princess or lady in hiding — Cinderella herself is high-born, forced into servitude by cruelty and bad luck. But why are low-born servants treated as invisible and deemed unworthy? Why can’t a housemaid deserve her own happily ever after?

I really enjoyed Ten Thousand Stitches. It’s a bit lighter than Half a Soul, but offers some truly satisfying comeuppance for the nasty folks and great endings for the good guys. It was fun to get a glimpse of a couple of characters from Half a Soul — the books are companion pieces set in the same world, rather than connected stories, so it’s not necessary to read them in a particular order.

For anyone looking for some light fantasy entertainment — with a social conscience — the books of the Regency Faerie Tales are great choices!

I also ended up reading The Latch Key, a novella set in the world of the Regency Faerie Tales that takes place after the events of Half a Soul. This novella provides a backstory for Elias, and is worth checking out. (As far as I can see, The Latch Key is only available by signing up for the author’s newsletter, here.)

3Jun2023

Book Review: Half a Soul (Regency Faerie Tales, #1) by Olivia Atwater

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Half a Soul
Series: Regency Faerie Tales #1
Author: Olivia Atwater
Publisher: Orbit
Publication date: March 29, 2020
Length: 304 pages
Genre: Fantasy
Source: Purchased

It’s difficult to find a husband in Regency England when you’re a young lady with only half a soul.

Ever since she was cursed by a faerie, Theodora Ettings has had no sense of fear or embarrassment – a condition which makes her prone to accidental scandal. Dora hopes to be a quiet, sensible wallflower during the London Season – but when the strange, handsome and utterly uncouth Lord Sorcier discovers her condition, she is instead drawn into dangerous and peculiar faerie affairs.

If Dora’s reputation can survive both her curse and her sudden connection with the least-liked man in all of high society, then she may yet reclaim her normal place in the world. . . but the longer Dora spends with Elias Wilder, the more she begins to suspect that one may indeed fall in love, even with only half a soul.

Bridgerton meets Howl’s Moving Castle in this enchanting historical fantasy, where the only thing more meddlesome than faeries is a marriage-minded mother.

Pick up HALF A SOUL, and be stolen away into Olivia Atwater’s charming, magical version of Regency England!

Half a Soul is a fun, light-hearted romantic caper set in Regency England — and yet, there’s a darker element that’s unusual for this type of book, and it makes it very much worth checking out.

Dora is captured by a Lord of Faerie as a young child, and loses half her soul to him — only saved from losing her entire soul by the intervention of her devoted cousin Vanessa. But from that point onward, Dora experiences all emotions on a very low setting. She’s aware of feeling warmth toward her cousin, aware of things that seem wrong or might bother her, but it’s all very distant.

As a result, Dora has a hard time following society’s rules — she has no in-built filter to make her feel uncomfortable when she steps out of line (which is often).

After the Napoleonic War, England’s head magician, known as the Lord Sorcier, is both a hero and an object of scorn. High society is forced to accept him, but they neither like nor trust him. Still, he may be the only person who has a shot at restoring to Dora what was lost — but as their paths cross, their focus instead turns to the wretched conditions in London’s workhouses and an insidious, seemingly incurable plague that strikes the poorest of children.

The plot of Half a Soul is interesting and offers new twists on tales of enchantment and the dangers of being stolen away to the world of Faerie. Dora and Elias (the Lord Sorcier) have a strong connection, and I enjoyed seeing them work together to solve problems, right wrongs, and reclaim Dora’s missing soul.

The supporting characters are quite enjoyable too, and I appreciated how Dora and Elias are united in their commitment to force their friends and relatives to see the underlying ugliness and imbalances of their world and take action to help.

Half a Soul is a quick, light read, with entertaining plot twists and interesting approaches to the conflict between the human and Faerie worlds. As a bonus, the book also includes a novella, Lord Sorcier, that provides a prequel look at Elias’s backstory — it’s very good and sheds new light on on how Elias became who he is in Half a Soul.

Half a Soul is the first in a loosely-connected trilogy (Regency Faerie Tales), and I’m looking forward to reading more!

12Feb2023

Book Review: The Stolen Heir by Holly Black

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: The Stolen Heir
Author: Holly Black
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Publication date: January 3, 2023
Length: 358 pages
Genre: Fantasy
Source: Purchased
Rating:

A runaway queen. A reluctant prince. And a quest that may destroy them both.

Eight years have passed since the Battle of the Serpent. But in the icy north, Lady Nore of the Court of Teeth has reclaimed the Ice Needle Citadel. There, she is using an ancient relic to create monsters of stick and snow who will do her bidding and exact her revenge.

Suren, child queen of the Court of Teeth, and the one person with power over her mother, fled to the human world. There, she lives feral in the woods. Lonely, and still haunted by the merciless torments she endured in the Court of Teeth, she bides her time by releasing mortals from foolish bargains. She believes herself forgotten until the storm hag, Bogdana chases her through the night streets. Suren is saved by none other than Prince Oak, heir to Elfhame, to whom she was once promised in marriage and who she has resented for years.

Now seventeen, Oak is charming, beautiful, and manipulative. He’s on a mission that will lead him into the north, and he wants Suren’s help. But if she agrees, it will mean guarding her heart against the boy she once knew and a prince she cannot trust, as well as confronting all the horrors she thought she left behind.

#1 New York Times bestselling author Holly Black returns to the opulent world of Elfhame in the first book in a thrilling new duology, following Jude’s brother Oak, and the changeling queen, Suren.

I was so excited to hear that Holly Black would be returning to the world of her excellent Folk of the Air trilogy! And a book about Oak — how fun did that sound?

Except… surprise! — Oak isn’t the main character! Nope, it’s Suren, last seen as the pitiable child queen of the Court of Teeth, horribly mistreated and abused by her parents, who want to use Suren as a tool to overthrow the High King and Queen of Elfhame.

In The Stolen Heir, years have passed. Suren has been living wild in the mortal world, a creature who haunts the forests, keeping an eye on her one-time mortal family, from whom she was cruelly ripped away as a child, and staying busy by breaking enchantments on humans. But one day, Prince Oak, a boy who treated her with kindness once and now grown into a mesmerizing young adult, tracks her down and asks for her help. Lady Nore, Suren’s cruel mother, is starting trouble in the north again. With Suren’s aid, Oak is sure he can stop her.

And so begins their quest, a journey of miles and kingdoms, in which they encounter trolls, malevolent queens, a storm hag, and animated stick soldiers. As the danger mounts, Suren realizes that Oak himself perhaps cannot be trusted. What’s his true motivation in seeking her out? And is his kindness and warmth just further manipulation, or are there actual feelings there?

After a somewhat slow start, the pace picks up the further along the quest Suren and Oak manage to travel. There are dangers and betrayals, daring rescues and near misses. As the story progresses, Suren also starts to learn more about her own history, including the possible unraveling of everything she once thought she knew.

While I enjoyed The Stolen Heir once I got further along, it doesn’t quite measure up to the Elfhame books. Suren is hard to get to know, and the quest as it’s presented is confusing and a bit muddled. Eventually, the pieces come together more strongly, and the final third is actually quite good, with breathtaking action sequences, a few horrifying developments, and plenty of big reveals.

The Stolen Heir ends mid-story — we’re left hanging at a crucial moment of change. This book is #1 in a duology, with #2 — The Prisoner’s Throne — scheduled for publication in 2024. Obviously, I’ll have to read it! I can’t just be left hanging after that ending forever…

I recommend The Stolen Heir for fans of the Folk of the Air trilogy. Word to the wise — Jude and Cardan are discussed in this book, but they don’t actually appear at all. Here’s hoping they show up in The Prisoner’s Throne!

31Aug2022

Shelf Control #333: Daughter of the Forest (Sevenwaters, #1) by Juliet Marillier

Posted in Shelf Control by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Welcome to Shelf Control — an original feature created and hosted by Bookshelf Fantasies.

Shelf Control is a weekly celebration of the unread books on our shelves. Pick a book you own but haven’t read, write a post about it (suggestions: include what it’s about, why you want to read it, and when you got it), and link up! For more info on what Shelf Control is all about, check out my introductory post, here.

Want to join in? Shelf Control posts go up every Wednesday. See the guidelines at the bottom of the post, and jump on board!

Title: Daughter of the Forest (Sevenwaters, #1)
Author: Juliet Marillier
Published: 1999
Length: 554 pages

What it’s about (synopsis via Goodreads):

Lovely Sorcha is the seventh child and only daughter of Lord Colum of Sevenwaters. Bereft of a mother, she is comforted by her six brothers who love and protect her. Sorcha is the light in their lives: they are determined that she know only contentment.

But Sorcha’s joy is shattered when her father is bewitched by his new wife, an evil enchantress who binds her brothers with a terrible spell, a spell which only Sorcha can lift—by staying silent. If she speaks before she completes the quest set to her by the Fair Folk and their queen, the Lady of the Forest, she will lose her brothers forever.

When Sorcha is kidnapped by the enemies of Sevenwaters and taken to a foreign land, she is torn between the desire to save her beloved brothers, and a love that comes only once. Sorcha despairs at ever being able to complete her task, but the magic of the Fair Folk knows no boundaries, and love is the strongest magic of them all…

How and when I got it:

I’ve had an old paperback on my shelves for years — no idea exactly where it came from!

Why I want to read it:

I’m always up for a good faerie kingdom story, and this is a book (and series) that I’ve seen recommended many times over the years. It regularly appears in lists of great fantasy series, and I know I’ve seen readers with tastes that align with my own talk about how much they love this book.

The plot sounds complicated but compelling. Faerie bargains, strange kingdoms, and mystical elements all sound right up my alley — plus, from descriptions on Goodreads and elsewhere, it seems that these books are very much influenced by Celtic folklore, which absolutely appeals to me.

Daughter of the Forest is the first in a six-book series. I tend to be pretty reluctant these days about starting new series… but I do feel tempted to at least give this first book a try.

What do you think? Would you read this book?

Please share your thoughts!

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Want to participate in Shelf Control? Here’s how:

Write a blog post about a book that you own that you haven’t read yet.
Add your link in the comments or link back from your own post, so I can add you to the participant list.
Check out other posts, and…

Have fun!

30Jan2021

Book Review: Ironside (Modern Faerie Tales, #3) by Holly Black

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Ironside
Author: Holly Black
Publisher: McElderry Books
Publication date: 2007
Length: 323 pages
Genre: Young adult fantasy
Source: Purchased
Rating:

In the realm of Faerie, the time has come for Roiben’s coronation. Uneasy in the midst of the malevolent Unseelie Court, pixie Kaye is sure of only one thing — her love for Roiben. But when Kaye, drunk on faerie wine, declares herself to Roiben, he sends her on a seemingly impossible quest. Now Kaye can’t see or speak to Roiben unless she can find the one thing she knows doesn’t exist: a faerie who can tell a lie.
Miserable and convinced she belongs nowhere, Kaye decides to tell her mother the truth — that she is a changeling left in place of the human daughter stolen long ago. Her mother’s shock and horror sends Kaye back to the world of Faerie to find her human counterpart and return her to Ironside. But once back in the faerie courts, Kaye finds herself a pawn in the games of Silarial, queen of the Seelie Court. Silarial wants Roiben’s throne, and she will use Kaye, and any means necessary, to get it. In this game of wits and weapons, can a pixie outplay a queen?
Holly Black spins a seductive tale at once achingly real and chillingly enchanted, set in a dangerous world where pleasure mingles with pain and nothing is exactly as it appears.

I’m going to keep this post short, because I just don’t find myself having all that much to say about Ironside. But hey, I posted reviews for the first two books in the trilogy (Tithe and Valiant), so I might as well be complete about it!

In Ironside, we go back to the main character from Tithe — Kaye, the pixie raised as a human, who has fallen in love with Lord Roiben, the ruler of the Unseelie Court. He sets her on what seems to be an impossible quest, and meanwhile, is on the brink of war with the Seelie court, which his outnumbered people seem destined to lose.

Alongside her best friend, the mortal Corny, and their new friend Luis (who was introduced in Valiant), Kaye has to try to solve the riddle of her quest and find a way to prevent the war that’s likely to end with Roiben’s death, while also keeping Corny from the endless disasters that seem to pop up wherever he goes.

As in the other books in the trilogy, Ironside is set in New York, where faeries need magical powders of protection to live amidst all the poisonous iron of the human world. This book is not as bleak and grim as the 2nd book. There’s still danger, but the focus is mostly on events involving the faerie courts, and it doesn’t have quite the same sense of urban grittiness.

I’m not mad that I finished the trilogy, but I didn’t love the overarching story as a whole. Some characters are endearing, but the plot didn’t grab me, and key moments felt kind of brief and lacking in substance.

My edition of the trilogy (a three-in-one volume) includes The Lament of Lutie-Loo, a short story (written in 2019) about Kaye’s sprite companion and the visit she makes to Elfhame. I liked this a lot — it’s light and fun, and I think I particularly liked it for the glimpses of beloved characters from the Folk of the Air trilogy.

I’d been curious about these books, and they were on my list of series I wanted to read this year, so I’m glad to have accomplished what I set out to do. This trilogy as a whole didn’t thrill me, but I do love Holly Black’s writing and imagination, and look forward to reading a few more of her books.

29Jan2021

Book Review: Valiant (Modern Faerie Tales, #2) by Holly Black

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Valiant
Author: Holly Black
Publisher: McElderry Books
Publication date: 2002
Length: 256 pages
Genre: Young adult fantasy
Source: Purchased
Rating:

Return to New York Times bestselling author Holly Black’s enthralling realm of faerie in the second Modern Faerie Tales novel, where danger and magic come hand-in-hand in the dark underground of New York City.
When seventeen-year-old Valerie runs away to New York, she’s trying to escape a life that has utterly betrayed her. Sporting a new identity, she takes up with a gang of squatters who live in the city’s labyrinthine subway system. But there’s something eerily beguiling about Val’s new friends that sets her on edge.
When Val is talked into tracking down the lair of a mysterious creature, she must strike a bargain to make it out with her life intact. Now drawn into a world she never knew existed, Val finds herself torn between her affection for an honorable monster and her fear of what her new friends are becoming.

While Valiant is the 2nd book in Holly Black’s Modern Faerie Tales trilogy, don’t pick it up expecting to continue where Tithe left off. In Valiant, we meet a completely new cast of characters in a mostly new setting, and it’s only toward the end that there’s some cross-over with the previous book’s characters.

Val is 17 years old when she discovers a major betrayal by the people she trusted the most. Distraught, she takes a train into Manhattan to get away for a few hours — but then can’t bring herself to go back home. She shaves her head and takes to the street, fortunately meeting up with a few other teen runaways who welcome her into their circle. She soon finds herself squatting with them at an abandoned subway platform, where they can be relatively safe, keep warm, and have a regular place to sleep.

Val’s new friends — Lolli, Dave, Luis — have secrets. It turns out that they do odd jobs for the faerie underground in the city, making deliveries of a special potion that helps the Fae stay healthy in a world full of poisonous iron. What Val’s friends have discovered is that when a human uses this potion, especially by injecting it, it gives them all sorts of delicious borrowed power. It’s also highly addictive, and none of them seem able to resist it for long.

Meanwhile, someone is murdering solitary fae, and suspicion falls on Ravus, the bridge toll who creates and distributes the magical potion. Val has grown closer to Ravus, but being in his circle becomes more and more dangerous. There’s adventure and chaos, friendship and betrayal, growing up and going home. There’s a LOT going on this book.

*Val & Ravus fan art via https://hollyblack.tumblr.com/*

In some ways, Valiant could be seen as a metaphor for the dangers of being a runaway. Remember how people used to talk a lot about how Buffy is really a metaphor for the teen years (high school is hell!)? You could look at Valiant in a similar fashion. There’s a point to be made here: The experiences of Val and her friends are dark and grim and in no way glamorous or magical. The book shows their daily struggle to get enough to eat, find a bathroom to clean up in, sleep where they won’t be robbed or assaulted, and figure out who to trust. Several characters fall quickly into addiction, and the fact that it’s a magical drug doesn’t change the fact that it’s destroying them more and more each day. Through the constant threats and uncertainties, this book makes clear that running away shouldn’t be seen as the answer. Home may be hard, but being on the streets isn’t the “magical” solution either.

At the same time, this is a faerie tale, although a very dark one. It’s bleak and hard, the fae the characters meet are mostly cruel, and the stakes are high — if they survive their lives on the streets, they can still be killed by creatures that want to hurt them just for fun.

This isn’t a pleasant read, but it did keep me interested. I liked Val and Ravus as characters, and I’m interested in seeing how the 3rd book, Ironside, wraps up the plots of Tithe and Valiant. As I mentioned in my review of Tithe, I don’t feel these books are anywhere near the greatness of the Folk of the Air trilogy — but considering that the Modern Faerie Tales books were written about 20 years earlier, it’s nice to be able to compare and see the author’s development of her craft and the worlds she creates.

Onward to #3!

23Jan2021

Book Review: Tithe (Modern Faerie Tales, #1) by Holly Black

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Tithe
Author: Holly Black
Publisher: McElderry Books
Publication date: 2002
Length: 272 pages
Genre: Young adult fantasy
Source: Purchased
Rating:

Welcome to the realm of very scary faeries!
Sixteen-year-old Kaye is a modern nomad. Fierce and independent, she travels from city to city with her mother’s rock band until an ominous attack forces Kaye back to her childhood home. There, amid the industrial, blue-collar New Jersey backdrop, Kaye soon finds herself an unwilling pawn in an ancient power struggle between two rival faerie kingdoms – a struggle that could very well mean her death.

I have been wanting to read the Modern Faerie Tale trilogy ever since reading the author’s more recent Folk of the Air series, which I love to pieces. Tithe, the first book in the trilogy, was first published in 2002, and is Holly Black’s first novel.

Kaye is a 16-year-old girl who lives wherever her mother happens to land, raising herself while her mother focuses on her band. She stopped going to school a couple of years earlier, rather than continuing to go through the process of starting over every time they pick up move somewhere new for the sake of a new gig.

When they need a sudden escape from a dangerous situation, they move back to Kaye’s hometown in New Jersey to live in her grandmother’s house. Kaye is happy to reconnect with her elementary school bestie, Janet, and also hopes to see her imaginary friends again. But are they really imaginary? In her early years, Kaye would tell anyone who would listen about her magical fairy friends, which no one ever believed, earning herself the reputation of being a weird kid.

Some strange things start to recur, and after a bad night out, Kaye runs into a beautiful, otherworldly man in the forest who’s been injured. As she tries to help him, a bond is forged, and she starts to learn more about her own true nature. It turns out that Kaye is a pixie changeling, placed under heavy glamours to appear human and exchanged for the real baby Kaye, who’s been raised in Faerie in Kaye’s place.

Things escalate quickly, and Kaye finds herself pulled into a power struggle between the different Fae courts. She’d like to trust Roiben, but he’s clearly dangerous as well, and Kaye is still learning about her own magic and abilities, as well as worrying about her mortal friends who have inadvertently gotten mixed up with the world of Faerie.

Kaye is a great character, a little jaded and world-weary, but also in awe of the new world that opens before her. She hates the power games and brutality shown by some of the Fae, but she sees beauty in this world as well. The dynamic between Kaye and Roiben is quite fun. (Side note: Kaye and Roiben make brief appearances in the Folk of the Air trilogy, and once I realized that they were the main characters in Tithe, I knew I needed to read it.)

There are some tragic turns and dramatic encounters, and the pacing of the story is quick and engaging. That said, this book was written almost 20 years ago and is a first novel, and both of those elements show. I can’t fault a book for depicting the time in which it was written, but it’s still jarring, here in 2021, to have teens not glued to their cell phones, see them using pay phones, or mention the noise their modem makes while connecting to the internet.

In terms of this being a first novel, it’s well-written and engaging, but having read the Folk of the Air trilogy, Tithe suffers by comparison. Which may just be a round-about way of saying how amazing the Folk of the Air books are — sophisticated plotting and world-building, powerfully depicted characters, intricate relationships… I could go on and on. Reading Tithe after those books, it’s clear that Tithe is much simpler writing, and at the same time, doesn’t do as good a job of explaining the various power dynamics of the Fae courts (which we basically get to know about via one massive information dump).

Holly Black is an incredibly gifted writer, and it’s interesting to see where she started. The world of Tithe is related to the world of the Folk of the Air, and reading Tithe is a great chance to experience Faerie as the author first depicted it.

I will definitely read the other two books in the series (Valiant and Ironside), and then have an unrelated trilogy (Curse Workers) and an unrelated novel (The Coldest Girl in Coldtown) by Holly Black on my TBR shelf.

I do recommend Tithe, especially for fans of the author’s later books.

For more of my reviews of Holly Black books:
The Darkest Part of the Forest
The Good Neighbors (graphic novel trilogy)
The Cruel Prince
The Wicked King/The Queen of Nothing
How the King of Elfhame Learned To Hate Stories