Welcome to the second of my 'Reading the Rainbow' posts, in which I take the books I received in my 2023 book advent - each cover representing a different colour - and review them for you!
February is BLACK and the book is Bones of Faerie by Janni Lee Simner.
Read on to find out more...
Blurb: A dark fairy-tale twist on apocalyptic fiction—as familiar as a nightmare, yet altogether unique.
The war between humanity and Faerie devastated both sides. Or so fifteen-year-old Liza has been told. Nothing has been seen or heard from Faerie since, and Liza's world bears the scars of its encounter with magic. Corn resists being harvested; dandelions have thorns. Trees move with sinister intention, and the town Liza calls home is surrounded by a forest that threatens to harm all those who wander into it. Still Liza feels safe. Her father is strong and has protected their town by laying down strict rules. Among them: Any trace of magic must be destroyed, no matter where it is found.
Then Liza's sister is born with faerie-pale hair, clear as glass, and Liza's father leaves the baby on a hillside to die. When her mother disappears into the forest and Liza herself discovers she has the faerie ability to see–into the past, into the future–she has no choice but to flee. Liza's quest will take her into Faerie and back again, and what she finds along the way may be the key to healing both worlds.
Review: I confess that I have been keen to read this book since quotes from Chapter One (quoted below this review) began circulating on social media, so this reading challenge was the perfect excuse.
The magical elements of the story were not only the initial hook but the aspect that kept me reading, intrigued, throughout. I would be perfectly happy to read endlessly about as many different powers and abilities as this author could imagine and I loved the careful balance in showing how each incident could be perceived from the two opposing sides of the magic divide.
Most of the story, though, was a YA coming-of-age journey. We see through the first-person narrative eyes of Liza as she discovers that all might not be as she was taught in her restrictive upbringing, and that others - and herself - may have hidden depths, for better or worse. This learning to assess people and situations for oneself instead of relying on what you are told by adults around you is obviously a critical part of the journey from child to young adult, and this story was one of the clearest portrayals of that process that I have read.
The storyline isn't fully resolved by the end of the book, as this is the first book in a trilogy, but I did feel quite satisfied with Liza's story arc to that point and particularly that her baby sister's haunting story comes to a peacefully sad conclusion - none of the rest of the book contains as much horror as that held in those tiny 'cracked and bloody bones' in my opinion.
Still, it should be noted here that there are some obvious trigger warnings related to death of and harm to children, and some less obvious but equally distressing ones, including domestic violence, war aftermath and (violent, but not graphic) death of an animal. My feelings are that the author treats such issues with respect and empathy, and with the sympathetic understanding that such horrors are too often a part of the imperfect real world.
While perfectly pitched for teen and young adult readers, I definitely also enjoyed this as a... erm... old-ish adult reader, and think my younger self would have been utterly enraptured. The clever combination of a post-apocalyptic return to a simpler life and more medieval morality with the faery-tale, otherworldly magic worked really well and reminded me of John Wyndham's The Chrysalids (replacing the sci-fi with fantasy) - another book that explores the human tendency to blame and punish ourselves for disasters by focusing on the different and other among us.
I would definitely read more from this series/author (those beautiful simple covers alone are calling to me!) but would recommend it even more to younger readers looking for a coming-of-age dark fantasy to fall in love with.
I had a sister once.
She was a beautiful baby, eyes silver as moonlight off the river at night. From the hour of her birth she was long-limbed and graceful, faerie-pale hair clear as glass from Before, so pale you could almost see through to the soft skin beneath.
My father was a sensible man. He set her out on the hillside that very night, though my mother wept and even old Jayce argued against it. "If the faerie folk want her, let them take her," Father said. "If not the fault's theirs for not claiming one of their own." He left my sister, and he never looked back.
I did. I crept out before dawn to see whether the faeries had really come. They hadn't, but some wild creature had. One glance was all I could take. I turned and ran for home, telling no one where I'd been.
We were lucky that time, I knew. I'd heard tales of a woman who bore a child with a voice high and sweet as a bird's song—and with the sharp claws to match. No one questioned that baby's father when he set the child out to die, far from our town, far from where his wife lay dying, her insides torn and bleeding.
Magic was never meant for our world, Father said, and of course I'd agreed, though the War had ended and the faerie folk returned to their own places before I was born. If only they'd never stirred from those places—but it was no use thinking that way.
Besides, I'd heard often enough that our town did better than most. We knew the rules. Don't touch any stone that glows with faerie light, or that light will burn you fiercer than any fire. Don't venture out alone into the dark, or the darkness will swallow you whole. And cast out the magic born among you, before it can turn on its parents.
Towns had died for not understanding that much. My father was a sensible man.
But the memory of my sister's bones, cracked and bloody in the moonlight, haunts me still.
- Janni Lee Simner, Bones of Faerie
About the author:
Janni Lee Simner lives in the Arizona desert, where the plants know how to bite and the dandelions really do have thorns; in spite of these things--or maybe because of them--she's convinced she lives in one of the most stunning places on earth.
Janni has published four novels for young adults, the Bones of Faerie trilogy and Thief Eyes, and she wrote the script for the video game The Huntsman: Winter's Curse.
She's also published four books for younger readers--most recently Tiernay West, Professional Adventurer--as well as more than 30 short stories, including appearances in Cricket magazine and the Welcome to Bordertown anthology.
Website: https://www.simner.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/janni
Twitter: https://twitter.com/jannileesimner
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jannileesimner/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jannisimner/
No comments:
Post a Comment