If I had a dollar for every person who has told me they hate faerie books, I wouldn’t have to write any more of them. I get it from with people telling me how surprised they were to like one of mine; I get it from people explaining why they will never read one, mine included. I get it from friends, from other writers, from people in publishing. Maybe vampires or spy novels are hated just as much, but for some reason no one seems as eager to talk about it.
With a new faerie book, The Cruel Prince, coming out, I’ve been thinking a lot about this disinclination. I have come to believe there’s a fear of a certain iridescent, unicorn-hugging, patchouli-scented wiftiness in picking up a faerie novel. A concern over too-great sincerity. And a worry that words like “prithee” and “greensward” and people talking in riddles (or worse, doggerel) indicates a swift descent into the mawkish and silly.
What I love about faerie books is much like what I love about faerie folklore. I love the idea of magic being out there, trickster magic, uncertain as the weather, potentially dangerous, but also beautiful. Like storms, the Folk are scary, but majestic enough that even when one is trying to kill you, you might still marvel at it a bit.
Which is why I’ve put together this list. Five faerie books for people who say they hate faeries, in the hopes I can convince you.
No wiftiness.
Very little patchouli.
For those of you who read historicals, I’d recommend the The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope, in which the People of the Hill live underground and steal away humans. Exiled by Queen Mary Tudor to a remote household, Kate Sutton finds herself in their power. The faeries here are grim and remote, with “contempt for ordinary human comfort and delight.” The magic is subtle and strange. And Kate herself is a wonderful character, practical and honest and brave to the end.
For the literary fiction reader, Some Kind of Fairy Tale by Graham Joyce uses Faerie as metaphor yet never shies away from the idea that it might also be entirely real. Missing for twenty years, Tara Martin appears one day on the doorstep of her parents’ house, looking disheveled and not much older than she did when she disappeared. This leaves her family, particularly her brother, Peter, to puzzle through her story of a trip to a fantastical realm that sounds occasionally like an erotic dream. Has she really been there or is she hiding a part of her past she doesn’t want to confront? Is she even his sister?
For anyone who loves a short, brutal tale, Franny Billingsley’s The Folk Keeper is one of my favorites. Corrina Stonewall must sit in the chilly dark, bringing offerings of raw eggs, meat, and milk to draw off the seething anger and endless hunger of the Folk. “They are mostly mouth,” we are told. “Wet mouth and teeth.” Corrina’s unsentimental voice reveals her discipline, her deep sense of responsibility toward the Folk and her willingness to lie to everyone else. Full of perfect, strange little details (she is never cold and her hair grows two inches in the night), this invokes the mythic with great efficacy.
For the high fantasy lover, I would recommend The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison. Set in a land of elves, it follows the half-goblin son of the Emperor who inherits the throne after spending his entire childhood in remote exile. Maya is unused to court intrigue and entirely untrained in politics, but must still somehow prevail against the plots that surround him. And as mysterious details in the death of his father and elder brothers become clear, he must discover the assassin before there is an attempt on his life. This is an intricately built world, with fabulous linguistic invention, but at its heart is enormous, revolutionary kindness.
For the mystery reader, Seanan McGuire’s October Daye series kicks off with Rosemary and Rue, in which changeling (here, meaning of mixed faerie and mortal lineage) Toby is yanked out of her life and transformed into a fish. This could be played for laughs, but it’s not—it’s scary and strange and causes her to lose enough time for her mortal child to grow up without her and her mortal husband to move on, believing her to have abandoned them. McGuire is a dab hand at blending magic and mystery, but what elevates the entire series is her ability to allow her characters to experience pain, loss, and love. She also has a keen understanding of when to deploy humor to puncture over-sincerity and when to allow the magic to be numinous, beautiful and terrifying.
There are others that I am sorry not to be able to discuss, particularly Terri Windling’s Bordertown anthologies, which along with Pamela Dean’s Tam Lin, Ellen Kushner’s Thomas the Rhymer, Charles de Lint’s Jack the Giant Killer, and Emma Bull’s War for the Oaks form what I think of as the backbone of the elfish wing of the urban fantasy genre. I couldn’t choose between them and you shouldn’t—read them all. I am also sorry not to be able to recommend more recent works like Elizabeth Bear’s sweeping Promethean Age saga and Melissa Marr’s atmospheric Wicked Lovely series. Five books are not nearly enough to express the breadth of my love for Faerie.
And yet, I think among the five books I’ve described, I believe you will find one to your liking. After all, what’s that saying about hate being closer to love than to indifference?
Holly Black is the author of bestselling contemporary fantasy books for kids and teens. Some of her titles include The Modern Faerie Tale series, the Curse Workers series, Doll Bones, The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, and The Darkest Part of the Forest. Her latest novel, The Cruel Prince, is the start of a new fantasy series. She has been a finalist for an Eisner Award, and the recipient of the Andre Norton Award, the Mythopoeic Award and a Newbery Honor. She currently lives in New England with her husband and son in a house with a secret door.
Well, I don’t much like Fae stories, either.
I’m totally done with Seanan McGuire’s “October Daye” (and the millions of similar tales–that’s the kind of Faerie that really annoys me), but Joyce’s The Tooth Fairy was fantastic (pun, of course, intended), so I’ll certainly give Some Kind of Fairy Tale a chance. I think I’ll pass on Perilous Gard (I like “historical”, but it’s won awards as a children’s book, not even YA), but everybody tells me I need to read The Goblin Emperor.
As for the also-rans, I’ve not found anything to like by Terri Windling, and Tam Lin was almost completely not about Faerie! In my review of it, I wrote “the fantasy element is almost non-existent for the vast majority of the book. There are some hints, but the first real evidence of fantasy comes at the 90% point, and there’s no actual confirmation until you’re 95% done.” So, really, despite being based on a fairy tale, it’s not much about Faerie!
Charles de Lint, of course, is phenomenal. Probably because there’s very little of traditional European Fae or modern Urban Fantasy Fae in it.
I love faeries–especially with a nice white-wine sauce…
A Tor.com fairy article without a reference to Jo Walton’s Among Others? Color me surprised.
Perilous Gard is a wonderful book. Utterly believable, nevermind that is a young adult historical fantasy. such a great use of time, place, myths and ballads!
Seconding Charles De Lint. Also adding John Crowley’s Little, big as another fantastic book where faeries don’t get on your nerves.
@@.-@, I too totally adore Perilous Gard. I love the way Katherine constantly punctures Christopher’s Byronic posturing (three centuries before Byron) ending with comparing his golden masked get up as the ‘King of the Land’ to gilded gingerbread.
Perilous Gard is such a treasure. I was delighted to see it included on this list, since it tends to get overlooked (I assume due to its age. Even though it holds up really well). I also really enjoyed The Goblin Emperor.
I’ll have to check out some of the others.
The Perilous Gard was one of my favorite books as a child and it’s so refreshing to see it mentioned!
Patricia Briggs series about Mercy Thompson includes Fae characters, and they are great! She mixes her supernatural creatures across cultures quite effectively.
Suzanne McLeod’s Spellcrackers has a Sidhe main character.
I recommend Cuckoo Song, by Frances Hardinge. Its fairies are deeply creepy and not nice at all. The five recommendations in the post are fairy stories for readers of particular genres; this one would be a recommendation for horror readers. It’s not gory, but it’s suffused with a tremendous sense of dread and wrongness.
I hadn’t thought of The Goblin Emperor as a faerie book, but I guess I see where that’s coming from.
The books that sprang to my mind when I read the post’s title were: Little, Big, Bones of Faerie (YA), and Johnathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.
Among Others is also wonderful and should be read by everyone.
Would Alex Bledsoe’s Tufa books count?
Also, if someone isn’t into faerie books, but doesn’t mind them showing up and playing important roles now and again, you can always recommend The Dresden Files.
The Age of Misrule trilogy by Mark Chadbourn, first book Worlds End, is well worth a read and if you get on with it then there are another two trilogies that follow.
Also The Courts of the Fayre series by Mike Shevdon beginning with the Sixty One Nails.
One that’s very hard to find is “Will O the Wisp” by Thomas Burnett Swann. Its protagonist is 17th-century poet Robert Herrick, who encounters strange beings who may be either supernatural “faeries” or else some hidden, archaic sentient race, which events become the inspirations for some of his poems (so this may also be classified as a “secret-history” novel). It was serialized in F&SF in 1974 and the only book edition is a British paperback from 1977. So far as I know, it has never been reprinted since.
May I suggest finding a copy of John M. (Mike) Ford’s “The Last Hot Time”? An excellent use of fey in Chicago.
I haven’t read the others (except for Dean’s “Tam Lin”, which I thought was real good), although they all sound I might really like them (I have given serious thought to adding the October Dye series to my TBR list, but there are just so many others that always nudge themselves forward), but I absolutely adore “The Goblin Emperor”. I found myself leafing it again literally just a few hours ago and contemplating how to make my friends read it. I have read many good books during the last years, but few have left such an impression to my mind and memory as this one. There’s just something genuinely … yes, I have to borrow from the article, kind is the right word here … genuinely kind in this book. Not to mention the worldbuilding and intrigues. Absolutely a pleasure to read.
And I know I have pointed these books out before and risk sounding like a broken gramophone, but I’d dare to say Karen Marie Moning also takes on a little darker side of the faeries with her “Fever”-series (I really like the original five, the ones following them feel a little inferior to me, but still).
I enjoy the Kalayna Price Grave Witch books. They don’t break any new ground but they’re fun.
Someone mentioned the Dresden Files already, but I wanted to point out this bit: “Like storms, the Folk are scary, but majestic enough that even when one is trying to kill you, you might still marvel at it a bit.” The Dresden Files does this extremely well. The Fae are the literal embodiment of storms at times, and they can scare one of the strongest wizards in the world. That should tell you something.
…but at its heart is enormous, revolutionary kindness.
This. This is exactly what I love most about The Goblin Emperor.
Also, may I suggest Terry Pratchett’s Lords and Ladies?
Joining in the love for The Goblin Emperor and The Perilous Gard.
( @1: I don’t think there was as much of a separation between “childrens” and “YA” literature back in the 1970s. Out of curiosity, I checked the listings for my state’s combined library database; some of the local systems shelve it in Children and some in Teen. Whatever, it’s a well-written book.)
But if we’re talking about Tam Lin stories, we can’t leave out Diana Wynne Jones with Fire and Hemlock. A really good book, and other where the fairy presence is subtly done.
I’d also mention Mishell Baker’s “Arcadia Project” series (well, if two books so far is a series). Fae among film people in L.A., narrated by a very interesting protagonist.
Let me suggest Justina Robson’s “Quantum Gravity” pentology; which in the course of events goes very, very fae.
Uprooted, by Naomi Novik, comes to mind…
Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.
No one ever said elves are nice.
Elves are bad.
Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies
Raymond Feist’s Faerie Tale is brilliant. Nothing to do with the Riftwar and genuinely scary.
I’ve been meaning to get to Some Kind of Fairy Tale for some time. This is a great reminder. Little Big is another good one for the literary fairy tale as well as Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. If you want a great comedy, try The Good Fairies of New York by Martin Millar. Hilarious.
I believe, like most themes, creatures, tropes etc, that Fairies are awesome if done right
@1, I thought that about Tam Lin the first time I read it, that fairy doesn’t really show up until the end. Imagine my surprise when I re-read it and realized it’s there in a major way through the whole book. She just doesn’t point big arrows at it saying FAERY HERE. But the main character spends a lot of time in it.
Re: the article, I’ve never understood why people despise the whimsical, or the magical when it’s not harsh or “realistic”, whatever that means. I think they have a strong overlap with people who are uncomfortable reading about romance, positive outcomes, or good feelings. I can understand not liking a monotonous tone to a book, like happy, happy, whee, happy! (Or grim, grim, death, grim.) But hating when anything positive enters the story? I dunno. If people don’t believe good things are realistic, why even try?
I really liked Sabrina Flynn’s Legends of Frysta series. Can be really dark. Great, memorable characters.
+1 for Noami Novik’s newest, “Uprooted”. A very good read.
For those with a bit more urban fantasy bend I enjoyed the Fey of Tad Williams’ “War of the Flowers”, those it’s been 10 years+ since I’ve read it.
From Publishers Weekly:
[Ironically, Faerie is a distorted image of our own world, ruled by cruel fairy tyrants. The powerful classes, each named for a flower, wage war against each other, using colossal dragons as the equivalents of nuclear bombs. ” `If you believe in fairies, clap your hands’?? If you believe in fairies, kiss my rosy pink arse is more like it.”]
I am surprised no one has mentioned Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell?
May I cause a bit of a fuss (because online people seem to love fighting) when I suggest we go back to the #1 definition—in all the dictionaries I have available—for the word “faerie,” which is the *land* of the fairies. We’ve used the word “fairy” for many years to describe the fae folk.
Merriam-Webster (online) says:
Definition of faerie (plural faeries)
1: fairyland
2: fairy
faery
adjective
And the use of “fairy” to describe gay men seems to be in decline, as it should be.
(But maybe that’s why people started using “faery” instead for the fae folk. I dunno.)
I am a bit of a reactionary; I like many traditions (but not all). (Yes, some of my friends—writers and artists both—do also use “faery” incorrectly in my view.)
Just throwing it out there. Now let the name-calling and fighting begin. :)
Don’t forget Songs of Earth and Power by Greg Bear.
Well, you had me until you got to The Goblin Emperor. I am actually a huge fan of work that understands that faerie are not sweet little winged things, but dangerous, if fascinating, non-humans. Their stories shed light beautifully on otherness and morality. For example, the wonderful Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. But the Goblin Emperor was a very ordinary book dressed up in silk. The characters were not only not otherworldly, they were not even successfully human, just stereotypes designed to establish an anti-racism message. (Not that I object to anti-racism messages, but I prefer them to be less heavy-handed.) The story was a sugary, ho-hum ‘poor little orphan turns out to be a prince’ tale. But the trappings of wealth were certainly described in intimate detail.
… and I would direct you to Finnegan’s Field by Angela Slatter, a short story about Changelings on this very site. Slatter makes Changelings creepy again.
I would recommend Jo Walton’s Among Others. Its both the story of a teenaged science fiction fan finding community in fandom, and the story of a former chosen one who had a magical adventure and saved the world trying to go on with life. It stays ambiguous about how reliable the narrator’s version of events are, and works whether the fairies are real or not.
Holly Black’s own Darkest Part of the Forest was a lot of fun too, and did a good job of integrating the fantasy elements into a modern realistic setting.
Another vote for Bledsoe’s Tufa series; not the most sophisticated stories but well done with hints of a future where all may not turn out well for the Fae folk. Bledsoe mixes American folk tales, music, mystery, and, well, Faery stories into an atypical modern suburban fantasy. And for SF fans, Julian May’s Pliocene Exile quadrology (but not the related Galactic Milieu series). Arguably May provides a Faery origin story intermixed with a SF time travel tale.
Seconding Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, as well as Walton’s Among Others, Pratchett’s Lords and Ladies and Seanan McGuire’s October Daye series (am currently reading the fourth book, in fact). But Pratchett has written more about elves/fairies in the Tiffany Aching books, a subseries set in the Discworld for younger readers, but still very good. Especially the first book, Wee Free Men, deals with those pesky child-stealing fairies.
I did read the Fever series by Karen Marie Moning, but am on the fence about it for various reasons. I don’t think I’ll ever read it again. I also wasn’t very impressed by Bledsoe’s Tufa stories. And while I did love Addison’s The Goblin Emperor, I didn’t see it as much of a “faerie story” — it was just set in a fantasy world with various races/peoples, and I felt that the only reason the majority of the people were fairies and not humans was so that we as readers could look at prejudice and racism in a more detached and fresh way, not so tied to all of human real-world history.
Almost forgot: Elizabeth Hand’s Wylding Hall. A subtle bit of Faerie mixed with a nostalgic “documentary” of a 60s English folk-rock band and the making of their most famous album. A slim book that should appeal to fans of rock alt-history and English country mysteries.
I love “The Perilous Gard” – love, love, love it, probably my favorite take on Faery right next to “War for the Oaks”, so glad to see it highlighted here. The other four I haven’t read nor even heard of, except for “Rosemary and Rue”, which is on my to-be-read list. Guess I’ll have to give them all a try!
I must submit Catherynne Valente’s The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, since no one has mentioned it. It’s YA, and it’s beautiful. There aren’t actually many fairies in Fairyland, ~mysteriously~.
Martin Millar’s The Good Fairies of New York is irreverently poignant and laugh-out-loud funny. Even better, the introduction is by none other than Neil Gaiman. Great stuff.
Gael Baudino’s Gossamer Axe?
Mercedes Lackey’s Knight of Ghosts and Shadows, and sequels? (First place I ever saw the term “Urban Elves”?
I’ve read a number of these. I think Perilous Gard is long out of print. I loved Tam Lin, but can’t find my print copy and it doesn’t seem to be on iBooks, at least not the Australian page, but Jack The Giant Killer is available on iBooks and I bought it(again, a mislaid print copy!).
I was very impressed with Wicked Lovely, of which I’ve read the first couple of books. The author has done her research on Celtic Faerie lore, in fact I read some of the same books when I was doing my own research for a novel. And her faerie folk are NOT nice. You wouldn’t want to run into them, even the “good guys”, in a dark alley – and, given that this is urban fantasy, you just might.
I’m another reader who rolls her eyes when I see “faeries” instead of “fairies.” Not sure why, but it really annoys me. I find it twee. I actually have to overcome a certain amount of resistance to be able to read books like that, so I don’t read many. I’m not that crazy about urban elves either. No argument with people who like them. I’m just not one of them.
OTOH, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell hits ALL the right notes for me. So does Graham Joyce.
And Susanna Clarke calls them fairies.
For some fun, irreverent takes on fairies, have a couple of songs:
https://tomsmith.bandcamp.com/track/smash-the-frickin-fairies and
https://karimaaren.bandcamp.com/track/everybody-hates-elves
+1 for Raymond Feist’s Faerie Tale. That was an urban fantasy in modern America before it was a genre. Very much an eye-opener. I’ve often wondered what happened to the twins. Since there’s not been a sequel, I’m guessing they grew up to be claims adjusters or somesuch.
+1 to Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett (and the subsequent discworld books featuring Fairies). A good and exciting take on how rural communities handle fairies in an early industrial revolution proto-England.
And those books have an obvious influence on Foxglove Summer by Ben Aaronovitch. Modern British policing verses a fairy incursion in rural England…
I’m so excited to see so many other Perilous Guard fans! Some Kind of Fairy Tale has been on my TBR list for a while, and Folk Keeper also sounds amazing.
For others who like historical books, I recommend Marie Brennan’s Midnight Never Come, the first book in the Onyx Court Series. It aligns the goings on in the Fae courts with what is happening in the English Courts, starting with Queen Elizabeth I. I didn’t care for the sequel, In Ashes Lie, but it is still well written.
Just realised that all the books I mentioned, the fae are the antagonists.
That also holds true for Bloody Bones by Laurell K Hamilton (Book 5 of the Anita Blake series, while the series was still entertaining… basically before the author developed her obsession with erotica – yuk) and in the Kitty Norville series by Carrie Vaughn. Interesting, while they crop up as side plots in the early books, they seem to play no part in the main story arc through the 14 books and various short stories. This is in spite of it climaxing in apocalyptic stakes, and it being clear there are both good (or at least neutral) and bad fae…
I’m here to add my voice to:
War of the Flowers by Tad Williams. I’ve reread it fairly recently and to me it held up. Theo has to try to navigate a world operating under rules he just does not get.
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke. The fairy folk are suitably creepy and otherworldly. They have their own ways and desires totally divorced from the human characters’ ways of thinking.
Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett. He calls them elves, but he also calls them fair folk. They obey more of the fairy tropes than elf tropes so I say it counts.
I have to recommend Timothy J. Jarvis’ short story. Under the Sign of the Black Raven
Charles Stross’ The Nightmare Stacks was to my liking, and I quite liked a Ben Aaronovitch book I won’t specify in order to avoid a spoiler, but reading both of them in succession made me feel as if Pratchett had established a new cliché, and half-longed for some nice or at least mildly pleasant fae. (Like a lot of clichés, its establishing instances were well or masterfully done, but….)
I read the War of the Oaks and Tam Lin somewhere in high school so it’s been quite a few years now. Another series I enjoyed that I just discovered are re issued as e-books are the Tales of David Sullivan. I have print copies on the shelves of my bedroom at my mother’s house. It’s from the late 80’s early 90’s by Tom Dietz about a Georgia teen who stumbles across the great progress or hunt of a bunch of faeries. He is challenged to a game by a faerie lord known as the Windmaster and if David looses he will be taken underhill. The first book is called Windmaster’s Bane who knew Georgia had faerie mounds. I also loved the Goblin Emperor.
I enjoyed Jane Gaskell’s Strange Evil for a look at a very different fairyland. It’s a book China Mièville cites as an influence, and is written with amazing description and imagination, especially as the author was 16 at the time of writing.
@43, I don’t know if Perilous Gard is currently in print but you can find it on Amazon and other sellers.
I just read The Folk Keeper yesterday, thanks for the suggestion!
I’m another in love with Perilous Gard. (Which, by the way, is available in a nice narration on Audible.) It’s NOT a children’s book – by which I mean that while it can be read by clever children it’s also a bloody brilliant book for any age which should be much better known – yay Holly Black for giving it a boost.
Graham Joyce was such a wonderful writer. He left us way too soon. His _The_Tooth_Fairy_ also deserves a mention here.
JS&MN is fantastic as well.
@1, When the Perilous Gard came out in 1974, the classification YA hadn’t yet been invented. Books for older readers and teens were all categorized under Children’s. But the Perilous Gard s an unusually well written, complex, and sophisticated book. The author, Elizabeth Marie Pope, was a professor. Wikipedia says she specialized in Elizabethan England (no surprise there, as that’s the setting of the Perilous Gard) and Shakespeare and Milton. Her books are unusually layered, and she conveys in the writing a deep sense of the strangeness and power that linger in the old words and tales. Also the sense that the magic they hold is still there, undergirding everything–and it’s a dark magic. Nothing sugar coated here. HIghly, highly recommend this book and The Sherwood Ring, her other YA book set in America, in Colonial times–it’s totally different.
Lastly–my teenaged daughter just got me to read The Cruel Prince (we saw Holly B speak last week). I’ve been bugging my daughter to read the Perilous Gard for a long time, even telling her Holly must have read it and probably loves it. So happy to find I was right!