In one of my online groups, folks started talking about Reena McCarty’s The Tricky Business of Faerie Bargains. Being currently poor, I put it on hold at my library. I had some expectations based on the title, but I quickly learned that Faerie Bargains is more than faerie adventures but with lawyers and insurance companies. For one thing, the writing is gorgeously descriptive making the reading experience feel lush. I could see the world around Poppy.
The tree’s roots arched up over the water, an impossible tangle that held permanent shade. The bank rose up to my shoulders, carved out and totally private, unless someone stood directly across from the tree. Up close, the smell of woody, dusty vanilla was so strong it seemed like it would seep into my skin and hair and stay like smoke. The roots were wet and dark, forbidding in a way I had to grit my teeth to get past. The magic was subtle enough that most folks would just stay away, but obvious to anyone who’d felt it before. There was no way I was the only one to notice, but I never saw anyone else at the tree, so I figured no one in authority cared enough to do anything about it.
For another, as much as Faerie Bargains is a portal fantasy with walking as fast as you can to stop an assassination, it’s also about complicated friendships and choosing to have a future.
Poppy was stolen from her family as a child by faeries and grew up in the kitchens of a faerie king’s court. And then one day, after more than a century of human time, Poppy woke up back in the human world. In this universe, humans are well aware of the Otherside, and faerie bargains are a regulated business. Three years after her unwilling return, Poppy works in contracts, helping humans make contracts with faeries that are safe and fair. Secretly, she is still in contact with Sloan, one of her few friends in the Otherside. She is trapped between the human world she lives in and the faerie world she grew up in. When a contract goes wrong, she makes a deal for two weeks in Otherside to try to salvage the situation and finds herself in an even bigger mess than she realized.
Poppy has been stuck in grief for the life she didn’t choose to leave. What she discovers when she returns to Otherside is that she has changed. Her relationships and expectations have changed and that adds a depth to the adventure. I am looking forward to the next book.
