Synopsis: It’s two years since Henry last visited the faerie world and he’s doing his best to settle into normal life, but it isn’t easy for him to be ordinary. When he is asked to return and visit his dying friend, Mr Fogarty, Henry promises himself he will soon come home again. But there are wheels within wheels, and Henry soon finds himself caught up in a perilous, not to say precarious, plot to halt the spread of a terrible temporal plague. Powerful forces are at work in the Realm, forces that are determined to see Henry achieve his destiny… or die in some spectacularly gory fashion.

Review: With the very conclusive denoument of Ruler of the Realm, Herbie Brennan’s Faerie Wars series certainly looked like a trilogy, until this fourth volume appeared. In many respects, Faerie Lord seems like an add-on, an extra bit on the end of an already complete story, which means that there is a lot for it to prove, on top of delivering a solid story. *

In terms of solid story, Faerie Lord certainly delivers. Brennan’s characters and world are well-established by now, and the reader who has followed Henry this far will certainly still take an interest in his adventures. Despite the terrible plague ravanging the Faerie Realm, this is somehow a more personal story than any of the earlier volumes, revolving in the end around Henry and Blue, and Henry and Mr Fogarty, far more than around the fate of the Realm.

This shift of emphasis is the book’s saving grace. In a lot of ways, there was not much story left in the Realm itself, but by changing the focus, Brennan finds the extra mileage he needs. Faerie Lord is a fine, epic romance, without much of the lovey-dovey to slow down the action (which is what you get if your romantic leads almost never meet).

2008-03-01