Published: April 10, 2018
Publisher: Tor Books
Genre: Fantasy
Series: Tufa #6
Pages: 368 (Hardcover)
My Rating: 3.5/5.0
A copy of this book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
Synopsis:
“This is real.” Three small words on a film canister found by graduate students Justin and Veronica, who discover a long-lost silent movie from more than a century ago. The startlingly realistic footage shows a young girl transforming into a winged being. Looking for proof behind this claim, they travel to the rural foothills of Tennessee to find Sadieville, where it had been filmed.
Soon, their journey takes them to Needsville, whose residents are hesitant about their investigation, but Justin and Veronica are helped by Tucker Carding, who seems to have his own ulterior motives. When the two students unearth a secret long hidden, everyone in the Tufa community must answer the most important question of their entire lives — what would they be willing to sacrifice in order to return to their fabled homeland of Tir na nOg?
“Imagine a book somewhere between American Gods and Faulkner. Absolutely worth your time.” – Patrick Rothfuss, New York Times bestselling author
If you’ve been reading my blog for awhile then you may already know that I LOVE books about fairies. They’re my favorite fantastical creatures and I have a knee-jerk reaction to read any and all books featuring the Fair Folk. The Fairies of Sadieville obviously caught my attention and I suffered from this reaction, not realizing it’s actually the sixth and final book in a series. Woops. Fortunately, it can be read as a standalone without sacrificing the quality of the story.
There are actually two reasons I picked this book up so hastily without first researching it, the first being that I love fairies and the second being that this book’s setting is close to home. Sadieville is located in the fictional Cloud County, Tennessee somewhere in the northeastern corner, judging from the real towns mentioned. The story begins with two college students who stumble across an old film reel with what appears to be a girl transforming into a faerie, the words “This is real” written on the outside. This discovery sets them on a hunt for the lost town of Sadieville and answers about the fairie girl’s identity and veracity. This segues into the introduction of the Tufa people, who are in fact fairies or descended from them and they dwell in Cloud County. They seem very much like humans at first glance and many have even married humans (with their knowledge of course) and they aren’t malicious beings with too many joints and shark eyes.
Rather than leaving the reader with a tactless info dump, the events surrounding the mysterious faerie film are explained by introducing those behind it. There is a jump back to the early 1900’s, when Sadieville is a booming mining town and group of filmmakers and an actor come to town to shoot a movie. Sophronie Conlin, a lovely Tufa girl meets them and she and one of the fellows become quite smitten. Eventually she reveals her true form, but one of his buddies catches it on film while he’s being a creep in the shrubberies. I thought this was an emotive way to expound on the film’s history, rather than having someone just tell our hapless college characters. There’s a bit more jumping around between characters and things are revealed, which causes quite a stir among the Tufa, and it’s really somewhat anticlimactic.
Overall, this book had its touch of magic, a lovely if somewhat underdeveloped setting, and an ending that was so-so for a standalone and if you take into consideration that this is technically the final book in a six book series, it’s probably kind of disappointing. There was no bang at the end, just a *pop* like from those little bang-snap firecrackers that you throw at the ground. I enjoyed this book for sure, but I wasn’t inspired to go back and read the previous books at all. I do think that if you have read the previous books, you may enjoy this one more than I did, as there’s definitely some history and context that you need.
Powder & Page 