Ash Fitzsimmons took the bare bones of The Midsummer Nights Dream and wrote a full novel with plenty of action and developed characters, some humor and yes, even some mistaken identities in Stranger Magics.
Quick Synopsis
Colin LeFee owns a bookstore in Rigby on the Atlantic coast, lives quietly except when helping Father Paul exorcise faeries who are having too much fun in our world. (Some Fae get their jollies tormenting humans, others like to rape or just be obnoxious.) The story opens with Colin kicking one of Oberon’s court out of town. When Colin returns home he finds his neighbor Mrs. Cooper bringing a 16 year old girl to him. The girl is terrified (and defiant, like most frightened people), denies she belongs in Rigby, wants to go home. Colin investigates and discovers the girl is Olive, long lost daughter of his old flame Meggy, and a changeling, whom Titania kicked out.
You see, Titania is the queen of faerie, powerful, nasty and Colin’s Mommy Dearest. Colin’s dad died about 700 years ago and was human, making Colin half fae.
Along the way we meet Oberon, several wizards both good and semi-good, Robin Goodfellow, Mab, a seminarian and the best character of all, Mrs. Cooper.
Characters
Fitzsimmons did a great job building Colin’s character. He could have made Colin too good to be true, or a man tormented by his dual nature, but instead he took the harder path to make Colin a real person, someone who cares about others and about whom we care. As Colin mentions, full-blooded fae cannot love and most don’t try; we can blame his human parent for the fact that Colin can care, does care about people in general and individuals in particular. Colin takes his role as protector seriously; he protects us humans from other fae and if needed, from worse.
Colin suffers; he is smart, witty, perceptive. He is also stupid. Somehow he thought that spending a night with Meggy 16 years ago and leaving the next day was the honorable thing to do; Meggy of course did not share his opinion.
Olive was the least developed character. She is a typical petulant teen, except now she is a faerie exile marooned here with a mom she denies, constrained from some magics, alone and hating every moment and person in her new American life.
Several of the other characters are well developed, Meggy, Slim/Rick the bartender/wizard artisan, Joey the seminarian, Toula the wizard, and my favorite, Mrs. Cooper. Mrs. Cooper starts as your basic busybody old lady neighbor, yet somehow knows to bring Olive over to Colin (and who would bring a 16 year old girl to a 20-something guy for help instead of calling 911?), who calmly accepts the fae infestation and helps Colin defeat the attacking faeries by hitting them with her stainless steel teakettle. She doesn’t say much and what she does say is tinged with kindness and humor. Fitzsimmons made excellent use of a could-have-been prototypical character for the story.
Overall
The writing style is good. I enjoyed the flashbacks as Colin fills us in on his 700+ years in the human world and explains his antipathy to Titania. I wasn’t real sure I liked the ending with Colin in his new role, but given the alternatives he faces and the fact that he literally has no good option that would not cause greater woes for himself and all of us humans, it makes sense.
I hope the author, who bills herself as an “unrepentant car singer” writes more, either with the same world or explores new territories. I will certainly purchase more from her.
4 Stars
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