Liberty Hardy is an unrepentant velocireader, writer, bitey mad lady, and tattoo canvas. Turn-ons include books, books and books. Her favorite exclamation is “Holy cats!” Liberty reads more than should be legal, sleeps very little, frequently writes on her belly with Sharpie markers, and when she dies, she’s leaving her body to library science. Until then, she lives with her three cats, Millay, Farrokh, and Zevon, in Maine. She is also right behind you. Just kidding! She’s too busy reading.
Twitter: @MissLiberty
Even though I’ve had jobs where I recommend books to other people for close to two decades now, I still get excited to receive recommendations myself. I get most of them from friends and internet acquaintances, but occasionally I spy something online that also catches my interest.
That very thing happened the other day, as I was looking for information on an older title. I came across a discussion about upsetting fantasy books, and one jumped out at me, because the commenter said something about it ruining their life and upsetting them forever. SOLD! That’s my kind of read. And, as it happened, I had the book, You Let Me In by Camilla Bruce, already hiding in my stacks.
So I dug it out and I’ve started reading it, without spoiling it for myself by looking at the description. I’m only fifty pages in, but it is clearly a very, very dark fairy tale, which made me think of other dark fairy tales I have read and about stories of bad fairies. And now, here we are. (Thank you for coming with me on this journey.)
We know not all fairies in literature are friendly and helpful. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell went up against an evil one. Tinker Bell was a petulant little imp, when she wanted to be. Fairies steal babies, play tricks, and generally cause mayhem. But the fairies in the three books below are really not nice.
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All Access members, read on for three fun books about wicked fairies.
Liberty Hardy is an unrepentant velocireader, writer, bitey mad lady, and tattoo canvas. Turn-ons include books, books and books. Her favorite exclamation is “Holy cats!” Liberty reads more than should be legal, sleeps very little, frequently writes on her belly with Sharpie markers, and when she dies, she’s leaving her body to library science. Until then, she lives with her three cats, Millay, Farrokh, and Zevon, in Maine. She is also right behind you. Just kidding! She’s too busy reading.
Twitter: @MissLiberty
Faerie Tale by Raymond E. Feist
A burgeoning screenwriter uses his newfound wealth to move his family into what he thinks is the house of their dreams. But instead, he’s plunked down in the middle of a reality where magic is real, and he’s caught in the middle of a war with some Very Bad Things.™ (What is also notable about this novel is that Feist has written over thirty novels since 1982, and Faerie Tale is the only one not set in the Riftwar universe.)
The Iron King: The Iron Fey by Julie Kagawa
This YA romantasy is a great “hey, mean fairy, give me back my sibling” story. Meghan Chase is about to learn something mind-blowing about herself: she’s the secret daughter of a faery king. And to save her brother, who has been swapped out for a changeling, Meghan will have to rescue him herself. But her journey is fraught with danger, as well as romance. She learns her real-world bestie is a faery, and she meets a steely faery prince. (Who might be the worst faery of them all, because girl, you can do better.)
The Call by Peadar O’Guilin
This frighteningly fun YA book has a Hunger Games-like challenge, but instead of teens hunting other teens, they’re hunted by really, really scary faeries. If someone is suddenly whisked away to another land, they have three minutes after the horn sounds to make sense of their surroundings and get the hell out of there—or reeeeeeeally awful things will happen to them. Because, despite the fact that humans train for this occurrence, very few survive The Call. But Nessa thinks she has what it takes to win.
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Okay, star bits, now take the knowledge you have learned here today and use it for good, not evil. If you want to know more about books, I talk about books pretty much nonstop (when I’m not reading them), and you can hear me say lots of adjectives about them on the BR podcast All the Books! and on Instagram.
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