Bones of Faerie

What an amazing book. Janni Lee Simner is a really wonderful writer. Bones of Faerie is dystopian YA at its best. (I don’t know if I’ve seen at its worst, though. Who knows what that would look like?)

Fifteen-year-old Liza lives in a world like ours. This is a time after the war against the fae and the land is blighted and desolate. Indeed, the very trees and nature itself possess the power to do great harm.

Magic is only known as something evil—the weapon of the faeries. And the telltale mark of a person cursed with faerie blood is pale hair, “Clear as glass,” Simner writes.

When her sister is born with just such a trait, things begin to unravel in Liza’s world. Her mother disappears, her father’s abuse toward Liza worsens and Liza herself ventures out into the wild to seek answers: what happened to her mother, and the faerie child she brought into the world.

There are a lot of genre books out there that deal with faeries, but this one takes a wholly different approach. We are never sure what to expect from the denizens of this world and I was constantly surprised. At its heart, Bones of Faerie is a coming of age story told in the most original of voices. I won’t give away more here, but the book is a quick read but full of wonderful language and vivid detail.

Check it out. It’s worth the time.