I picked up the latest YA release by Holly Black after realizing that this is same author who wrote “The Coldest Girl in Coldtown”, which I thought was a really fun twist on a traditional vampire story, thankfully having nothing to do with sparkling. This time, Black gives us a modern-day fairy tale, full of relatable teen characters mixed with beautiful, cruel fairies and other terrifying creatures.
The story starts at a small town party, just your average group of teens drinking and dancing and frolicking in the woods, but in Fairfold, all the cool parties take place around a glass coffin, in which lies a horned boy. (Note: somehow the author managed to avoid the obvious “All teenage boys are horny, right” joke, so I will try to do the same… Dammit.) The glass coffin has been there for as long as anyone can remember, and provides the town with much needed tourist revenue. The locals have grown up with knowledge of the fairies, and have a tentative understanding with them: the locals take care not to provoke the fairies and are therefore mostly left in peace, but the tourists are fair game for anything from harmless pranks to actual violence.
Shit gets real when Hazel wakes up one morning covered in dirt and broken glass, with a cryptic word scrawled on the wall of her bedroom in mud, and no memory of what happened. She tries to shake it off (shake, shake, shake), but when she gets to school, everyone is buzzing about the glass coffin in the woods being broken and the missing horned boy. Hazel and Ben immediately go off to search for their dream prince, ignoring Jack’s warnings to stay out of it. But it turns out that there’s more than just a fairy prince wandering the woods – a giant tree-like creature made of twigs and dirt is also on the loose, wreaking havoc on Fairfold. Hazel and Ben manage to find the horned prince, who introduces himself as Severin, but won’t tell them how he’s linked to the terrifying tree monster.
Considering the fantasy bent of this book, I thought the characters, adults and teens alike, were incredibly relatable. Having grown up in a small town, I can definitely identify with Hazel’s feeling of knowing everyone but not feeling close to anyone. I also really enjoyed how certain things were treated as not a big deal, like Hazel kissing random boys at parties. People crack jokes about her being a heart-breaker, but without any slut-shaming. The fact that Ben is gay is a complete non-issue as well. He is neither an inspiration nor a stereotype; he’s just a regular guy, desperate to fall in love, who’s had a succession of truly terrible dates. But even though the viewpoint shifts to Ben a couple times towards the end of the book, Hazel is the star. I love my female heroines strong and sassy, and this one did not disappoint. Hazel is a great character – a girl full of insecurities, doubts, and repressed childhood memories, who dreams of being a heroic knight who will save the handsome prince, instead of a princess sitting around a tower waiting to be rescued. She’s determined to save the day, but she just might need her very own Scoobies to help her do it.
This book reminded me of one of my favourites, Neil Gaiman’s “Stardust”, in the way that it combines the reality of life in a small town with magic and nearby creatures. Black keeps it fresh though, mixing some nice pop culture references (like Disney, Doctor Who, Hogwarts, etc.) with the old superstitions told by the locals to keep the fairies at bay. It’s a combination that lets you remember that these are regular kids, just in a really weird town. There are touches of normalcy even in the craziest situations – like when Hazel meets a fairy prince with horns and her first reaction is to text her brother. Or when the gang is talking about a bargain with the Alderking and Ben mentions something he read on Facebook. It’s an excellent way to keep the characters real, even as the story becomes more and more fantastic.
“The Darkest Part of the Forest” was a quick and very enjoyable read, and I think I actually liked it even better than “The Coldest Girl in Coldtown”, which means that I will be checking out more Holly Black novels.
