“”Don’t nitpick, it’s a very unattractive trait.””
The Boy Who Lost Fairyland is the fourth book in the Fairyland series and is the first one not to follow the character of September. Instead we follow a boy called Hawthorn, at least he’s called Hawthorn at first until he’s called Thomas…the different names are down to the fact that Hawthorn is a changeling, swopped with a human baby to grow up in our world where most of the story takes place.
“Hic Sunt Dracones. For in that same old and fancy way of speaking, those words mean: Here There Be Dragons. And, occasionally, humans.”
September is in the story but not until the very end when the main plot starts happening. Much of the book is taken up with the idea of a changeling from Fairyland being in the human world and this is something I have rarely – if ever – read in a story before. Usually stories about magical lands are so taken up with the humans that find their way there, that they quite forget there’s a fairy – or in this case troll – who’s been swopped before their arrival.
“Looking into Tamburlaine’s wood was like looking at a photograph of your parents when they were young. Who are those strange people? Could they ever have been real?”
As I said much of the story takes place in our world so it isn’t until the last 100 pages or so that Hawthorn makes it to Fairyland and the plot of the book gets underway. Even when it does it seems to come about and be resolved much quicker than the setup would have you think. We are re-introduced to September, the changeling is exchanged and it all seems much too easy for how much of the book led up to it…unless of course the whole book is a setup for the next.
“”Who’s afraid of something that can’t defeat a rinse cycle?””
The book does end on a cliffhanger, one involving the whereabouts of September rather than Hawthorn, which does make it seem as if Hawthorn is merely a side character that needed his own story in order for September’s next story to make sense rather than Hawthorn being a second main character who might get other novels.
“”He poisons my jam in alphabetical order. Arsenic on Monday, belladonna on Tuesday, cyanide on Wednesday…I haven’t had jam in five years.””
As a story within the Fairyland series the book is a good addition and depending on the next book is likely to be a necessary addition too, but anyone who wants to read this book as a standalone without having read September’s stories first will find themselves disappointed.
ChristyESWriter 