Faerie is slowly dying from a mysterious wasting disease. Tim Hunter, the new and as-yet-untrained magician, may be the only one who can save it.
But could Timothy Hunter, who briefly visited the realm of the Fair Folk, be the child of the prophecy?” pg 2
You don’t have to read the previous entry in the series about Timothy to understand this stand-alone story. Carla Jablonski does a good job recapping what has gone on before.
“Throughout all the journeys, it seemed like there were always people trying to kill him or take his magic.” pg 12
My beef with this book is, even though she uses Neil Gaiman’s characters, she doesn’t write with the magic of Gaiman.
The plot is incredibly straight-forward, the bad guys are sadly predictable and it just doesn’t sparkle.
Even Tamlin, the man who went to Faerie long ago and fell in love with its Queen, isn’t as complex as I wish he would be.
Tamlin knew that to the Fair Folk, as something was, it always would be. Nothing ever changed. The ability to see reality and to change was man’s magic. My magic, Tamlin thought.” pg 42
It’s not her fault. Jablonski has written a thoughtful young adult novel about reality not always being what it appears to be and explaining some of Tim’s origins.
She’s just not Neil Gaiman. There’s nothing wrong with that, but if you’re going to write someone’s characters, you need to embody who they are.
Now that he was in a real-life fairy tale, complete with its own monster, he realized how unlikely those stories really were.” pg 111
Read this entry in the series if you’re a completionist. Otherwise, may I recommend The Sleeper and the Spindle.
See my reviews of the first entry of The Books of Magic on my blog or the third entry in the series, Free Country: A Tale of The Children’s Crusade.
Thanks for reading!
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