This is a fine book, and an author I normally like, but I think it suffered from being read right after The Scar. Every time I picked the book up, I wanted to be back on the floating pirate city. Instead, I got a retread of a million other fairies-in-the-wood story. Nothing fresh, nothing groundbreaking, but well-written with okay characters.
Sylvia (get it? like sylvan? like woods?) hasn’t been home to visit her grandmother Iris (get it? like a flower? Yay Nature!) in almost a decade. When her grandfather dies, she’s forced to go back to the funeral. We’re not sure why she’s so adamant about staying away from Lynn Hall, the rambling estate where she grew up, except that maybe her grandmother is a little overbearing. Once the funeral is over, though, Iris gathers her coven and lays it all out for Sylvia: we protect the land, we keep the wicked fairies out, this is your birthright, get over it.
None of this is a shock to anyone but Sylvia, and of course, none of it is as simple as it appears. There are changelings, and humans in love with fay folk (and vice versa, even though the stories say they have no hearts), and it’s all a nice quiet fairy tale.
It’s just no China Mievelle, but that’s not its fault.
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