A Feather So Black (Fair Folk #1)
Lyra Selene
Orbit
2024, 490p
Read via my local library
Blurb {from the publisher/Goodreads.com}: The Cruel Prince meets For the Wolf in a sizzling fantasy romance inspired by Celtic mythology, spinning a magical tale of a changeling princess, her cursed sister, and the dangerous fae lord she must defeat to save her family.
In a realm without magic, Fia is a rare changeling, swapped for the Princess Eala by the wicked Fair Folk. Eala’s mother, the High Queen, has taken Fia in as an adoptive daughter and trained her as a warrior spy. Princess Eala, meanwhile, is the prisoner of a shadowy Folk lord, cursed to be a swan twenty-eight days of the month.
When a forgotten gate to the Folk realm is discovered, Fia is tasked by the High Queen to break Eala’s curse and retrieve her, and to capture a powerful magical weapon that will help humankind destroy the evil in Otherworld. Accompanying Fia on this mission is handsome prince Rogan, the betrothed of Princess Eala, and the very man who Fia secretly loves.
As the two journey through the gate, Fia is conflicted by her feelings for the prince. And as each moon cycle waxes and wanes, she soon finds herself fighting a heated attraction to the dark-hearted Gentry lord holding Eala captive as well.
With time running out to break Princess Eala’s curse and claim the powerful weapon, Fia begins to question everything-the truth of her origins, the reality of her mission, and the “love” of her mother and High Queen. Ultimately, the key to unraveling truth from half-truth and saving the balance between the realms might just be. . . herself.
My third prompt from my TBRJar this month was to choose a book from the display shelf at my local library. They have a couple of display shelves at my local branch, a small one when you first walk in with some new books to the library and a really quite long one that is ‘recent returns’. I went there to make my choice and I picked this one solely for the cover. The cover is absolutely stunning – love the colours. I was immediately drawn to it. I knew nothing about it when I picked it up and I gave the blurb only the most cursory read over before deciding that it would be my choice for that prompt.
Unfortunately this is: beautiful cover, interesting premise but not great execution.
This book centres around a changeling girl/woman named Fia. A changeling is a child left in place by the fae for a human child they steal. Sometimes those children left behind do things like explode into a flock of birds or crumble to dust or whatever. Fia doesn’t do that however, she continues to grow and age. She is raised by the Queen in place of the Queen’s stolen daughter, who is now somewhere in the realm of the fae. Although the Queen has ‘loved’ and provided for Fia it’s in a way that makes her feel like she’s worthless and that the Queen herself is the only person capable of loving a person such as her. Fia is definitely abused but can’t see it. When the Queen discovers that there might be a way to get her real daughter back, she asks Fia to complete the task, for multiple reasons.
Going with her is her childhood best friend Rogan and a Prince of…..I don’t know, some part of this world. Fia and Rogan played together as children, definitely did more than that as teenagers. It’s complicated by the fact that Rogan has been betrothed to the Queen’s human daughter since they were children. Fia has always known that he wasn’t meant for her. But she has trouble remembering that when he’s around.
This is a love triangle. And I hated it. For me, a huge part of this book is that it focuses way too much on Fia and Rogan when it’s obvious that they can’t be endgame. Instead, Fia meets a mysterious fae when she crosses over into their world and at first he’s definitely villainous but the more she finds out about the mysterious bond that keeps the kidnapped human girls in the fae realm, the more she realises he’s more just a morally grey victim of circumstances. But she can only enter the fae realm once a month on the full moon and stay like 24 hours or something – the rest of the time she spends waiting for the next full moon. With Rogan.
I really disliked Rogan as a character. He’s spoiled (really fits that mould of sheltered Prince who doesn’t know about reality) and patronising. He’s dismissive of Fia and yet will rely on her to pick up his slack about basic things. For example they know this is an in depth mission, this rescue they’re going on and he doesn’t even pack food or a sleeping bag. He just arrogantly assumes that he will be taken care of. And you could say oh he’s a product of his upbringing…..and maybe so. But he has absolutely zero self awareness and responsibility. He claims that he cares about Fia and look maybe he does. He’s also trapped in a terrible position, being betrothed to someone he met once as a child and didn’t like. But I didn’t like the way he treated Fia at all, he sulks and drinks in the times between being able to visit the fae realm and contributes almost nothing to the mission anyway. Because the book spends so much time on them two (it must be almost 60/70% through by the time it stops?) that to me, meant that the other part of the triangle, Fia’s relationship with Irian, the fae, feels woefully underdeveloped. They can already only spend like 24hrs a month together, or whatever it is, but so much of the narrative focuses on Rogan. I can get the childhood nostalgia that Fia feels for him but he’s such a surly baby that it’s hard to imagine any actual grown adult woman wanting a bar of him. And it leads to so few deep interactions with Irian, part of which is the construct of her ability to enter fae lands, but also just because instead of focusing more of the plot on those times, instead it’s the times with Rogan that are expanded upon repeatedly. It’s not until quite late in the book that Fia makes her choice and by that time, I was already bored. I’d had to sit through far too much Rogan.
There are things about the plot I enjoyed. But I honestly felt like large parts of the plot took a backseat for Fia’s internal musings about mostly Rogan. Again, the fact that she can only enter the fae realm every month or so and stay briefly, really means that the plot struggles to be driven forward in a timely manner. There’s so much stuff in-between that is just all filler, no killer. I didn’t realise this was first in a series (I don’t know why, almost nothing is stand alone these days!) but I think that it has been set up in what could be an interesting way for book two. But unfortunately I think I won’t be coming back to see what happens, I found this very so so. The writing is pretty but I want more than pretty writing. I want plot development and relationship development and for me, this book didn’t do either of those effectively.
5/10
Book #91 of 2024
All The Books I Can Read 
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