I rarely do this anymore, but this book was so good that I just had to write about it.
The Faerie Hounds of York by Arden Powell is a relatively short novella set in 1810, and it’s a dark, queer one.
Do I have your attention?
Good.
England, 1810. The north is governed by a single rule. Faerie will take as it pleases.
When William Loxley wakes up in a mushroom ring, he has no idea how he got there. He’s not particularly educated in the lore of Faerie — he comes from London, after all, and he only spent brief years of his childhood up North — but he’s well aware of the danger he’s in. Or is he? One way or another, he has no way but to trust the mysterious dark stranger who’s observing him from a nearby tree, and who introduces himself as John Thorncress.
Is Loxely cursed? Will they be able to break the enchantment? And why does Thorncress know so much about Faerie?
The Faerie Hounds of York by Arden Powell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Dark, enchanting, extremely well-researched but never to the point of becoming cloying or pedant, this novel will break your heart and put it back again multiple times in a short span of barely 200 pages. I loved everything about it: the delicate way you start to realise the nature of the main character’s predicament, the way it makes you care, the way it conveys a sense of doom and inevitability and yet never allows you to give up the fight… all of these things immediately connect you to the characters with few simple strokes of a brush dipped in moor fog, frozen mud and charmed ink.
Highly recommended. There aren’t enough books like this.
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