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Robin: This is the second book in the Clemency Pogue series; you may remember she was that tender-hearted fairy-killer who did her best to repair her mistake, with the help of the friendly hobgoblin Chaphesmeeso. Hobgoblins in this fairy-verse (called the Make-Believe) “maintain the order, the balance”, according to Chaphe. Goblins, on the other hand are “nothing but chaos and nastiness”. They are skinny and shrivelled, with cloven feet and ears like goat horns. You can see some goblins on the cover (not to be confused with the baby).
This time Clemency’s concern is for a poor little puppy-dog called Henry; hoping that magic might help the sick animal, she calls on the hobgoblin. Chaphe has troubles of his own, however. He has charge of a fledgling hobgoblin called Kennethurchin who cannot graduate into full hobgoblinhood because… well, that’s complicated.
As Clemency learns, hobgoblins were originally human babies rescued from the goblins who stole them out of their cradles, leaving animated clay babies behind. The proxy babies melt away in their first bath water; somehow, Kennethurchin’s proxy has escaped this fate and grown up into a peculiar little boy known as Inky Mess. His continued existence threatens the Make-Believe as well as holding Kennethurchin back. Chaphe says that no changeling has ever grown up before, and that the fairies, who know everything, say it will be cataclysmic. He expects Clemency to help with this little problem, but she has secret plans…
Meanwhile Inky, befoxed by his inability to read, is holding some fairies captive in the hope of using their magic, and they are hopping mad! Also hanging around is the sinister Fairy of Long Goodnights with her deadly wand. The fairies in this series do have some peculiar talents and interests: there are the Papercut Fairy, the Fairy of Impossible Itches and the Fairy of Awkward Silences, just for example. Although all-knowing, they are, according to Chaphe, as “dumb as putty”. A strange but appealing story. The sequel, in which Inky does his worst, is called The Scrivener Bees.
Robin: Tithe, the first of the Modern Faerie Tales series, is about a pixie who was changed for a girl-child and has grown up under a heavy glamour, believing herself to be human. Her human name is Kaye. When very young, she had faerie friends – thought by her mother and classmates to be imaginary: the hobs Gristle and Spike, the tiny winged Lutie-loo and the mysterious Thistlewitch. She moved from New Jersey to Philadelphia when she was ten, and they were half-forgotten. Now, at sixteen, she returns to her grandmother’s house, wondering if she will still find the old magic.
The first of the faerie Kaye meets is the wounded white-haired faerie knight Roiben. She wins his regard, though their friendship is not an easy one. The Thistlewitch warns her he is dangerous while also revealing the secret of her changeling origins. “It is rarely that we leave one of our own behind, but when we do, the child’s fey nature becomes harder and harder to conceal as it grows. In the end, they all return to Faery.” Kaye finds this an alarming idea, as she is attached to her human life. But she is fascinated too by the revelation of her pixie self: green-skinned, winged, with heightened senses and the ability to cast a glamour.
The “tithe” of the title is a blood sacrifice which is intended to bind the solitary fey to the Unseelie Court for the next seven years, affecting the balance of power. However, the Seelie Queen has her own plans. Kaye is drawn into the Seelie plot, unaware of the true cost to herself and the real danger to the humans she values.
The companion novel to Tithe is Valiant, set in New York City around the same time. Ironside concludes the series.
Robin: Ironside, the final book of the Modern Faerie Tales series, returns to Kaye, the heroine of Tithe, though Luis from Valiant features prominently. Roiben, reluctantly crowned king of the Unseelie Court, sends his pixie sweetheart Kaye away to protect her from the awfulness of his subjects, making the two of them miserable. Kaye has decided she must confess her changeling identity to her mother and bring the true Kaye, still a child, back from Faerieland. She also has the problem of her human friend Cornelius who is ruthlessly seeking revenge on the faeries for his humiliation and his sister’s death. When Corny is cursed with a deathly touch, they seek out the reputed curse-remover in New York, who turns out to be Luis.
Meanwhile, the faerie war has broken out again, and the first gambit inflicts serious losses on the Unseelie side. Just when Queen Silarial seems sure to win, she offers to settle the war the old-fashioned way – by single combat. Clearly, she is up to something yet again.
The romance is nicely handled – well, not too sickening, anyway! Kaye and Roiben seem poorly matched, what with Roiben being a knight of the faerie Gentry and Kaye a mere pixie, but they are both in-betweeners with divided loyalties – they don’t belong were they are, and they don’t belong where they came from either. This situation finds a rough-and-ready resolution by the end, with them both dividing their time, in the manner of Persephone, half above, half below.
Columbine: This is a very compelling book, but upsetting, both because of the central character who is rather urban and gritty and not at all sympathetic and because of the fairy subplot about an abandoned changeling.
Bobby, the fourteen-year-old narrator, is a bit loathsome to tell the truth, a thief and a liar, and revolting to his admittedly feeble mother. When the family moves to the country his only thought is how to get back to a life of crime in Dublin. Later on he does show some human qualities of diligence and doggedness, and there’s a hint he won’t turn out so bad. But you are unlikely to enjoy seeing the world from his point of view.
It is his little brother Dennis who has the fairy encounter. The cottage they are living in is on a path between two fairy forts. The family are warned by the farmer’s wife to put out a bowl of milk every night, but being citified they find this quite hilarious. Being deprived of the milk, the little old fairy woman comes through the cat flap into the kitchen.
Dennis takes it in his stride, but for Bobby, who has only whispers and odd noises and indications to go by, the whole business is sinister and nightmarish to a degree. He hears the story of the people who many years ago lived in the cottage with a strange daughter they thought was a changeling, who used to shriek in the night: “high shrieking, like something out of hell. You couldn’t tell if it was pain or anger or both… Once you got that sound in your head there was no way you would sleep again that night.” Eventually he puts the two things together and has a unexpected realization about the little woman, imagining her living lonely and scared in the fairy fort.
Fairy Columbine 