The Faerie Path

This is a book review of the book The Faerie Path by Frewin Jones. Sorry it took so long, but it is not the speed of my reading that is at fault here. There were at least four to five days where I didn't read at all (I got too busy, and by the time a got in bed I was too tired), and technically speaking, it only took me six days to finish this book. So here it is...

Warning: spoiler alert!

The Faerie Path starts out with a girl named Anita Palmer, and her boyfriend Evan. It's the eve of her sixteenth birthday, and Evan has taken Anita on a boat ride on the Thames to show her a surprise. Anita thinks he's going to confess his love for her, but she couldn't be more wrong. Evan gives Anita an amber necklace as a gift, and then says he needs to tell her something. But just then something goes terribly wrong: there's something in the water that is coming after them, and their boat crashes into a bridge. Anita wakes in the hospital, her head banged up, and Evan in the bed across the room from her. But Evan won't wake up, and the Doctors don't know why. They know it's not a comma, so the nurse just tells Anita that he'll be fine, and he could wake up at any moment. Anita's parents come by that night to give her an early present to cheer her up. They assume it's from Evan, because there is no return address, and when Anita opens it, it's a book. A big leather bound book, with blank pages inside. That night Anita wakes up late, and can't sleep. She looks at the book again to find writing in it, a story of a Faerie princess named Tania, the seventh daughter of the King of Faerie. This Princess Tania has a special gift: she can walk between the Mortal world and the world of Faerie, whereas no one else can. Anita's back begins to itch and burn, and she swears she can feel some kind of nubs back there, so she goes to the bathroom to check it out. When she gets in there the strangest thing happens: she sprouts Faerie wings and flies out the window, enjoying every moment of it. She wakes back up just as her wings give out, and she's on the bathroom floor with a nurse at her side. She thinks it was just a dream, so she doesn't worry too much. But things get stranger: she finds that her boyfriend Evan disappeared the next day, and next thing she knows a strange man is calling out to her. She follows the strange voice, and finds him on a balcony. She reaches for his hand, and-
She lands in a strange new world. The world of Faerie. This man tells her that she is the missing Princess Tania, and that she has been gone for five hundred years. Upon her return the King of Faerie is so pleased that he lifts the spell that has been cast on their land and that left it in eternal darkness, and the land is once more lit by the sunshine of daylight. The whole of Faerie goes into celebration and Anita gets to meet her sisters: at least, five of them. The last one, Eden, banished herself to a tower after their mother, the Queen, died in a drowning accident, and she hasn't come out since. At first Anita believes this all to be a wonderful dream, fabricated from the story she read in the book. But that soon changes, and after she sees the memorial of her mother (the Queen, who looks just like Anita), she finally realizes that everything is true: she is Princess Tania of Faerie. Everything goes all haywire from there: Gabriel (the strange man who "rescued" her from the Mortal world) was once her fiance, and is trying to woo her once more, Evan (her boyfriend) is actually Edric, Gabriel's servant (who was sent to the Mortal world by his master to retrieve her), tricked her and she is now angry with him, and Tania misses her family back in the Mortal world. She wants to go back, just once, so she can say goodbye, but she doesn't know how to work her strange new powers. She tries to ask for help from Gabriel, but he makes it very clear that he does not want her going back to that place, and has even revealed that the necklace Evan (or Edric) gave her as a gift was actually from him, and that it was a sort of tracking device, therefore she couldn't go without him knowing. Tania decides to go to her sister Eden, the one locked up in the tower, because she was said to be very skilled in the Mystic Arts, the Faerie's word for "magic". Eden does not help her though, instead throwing her out of her tower quite rudely and slamming the door behind her. Next Tania is betrayed by her sister Rathina (whom she thought was a good friend), who leads her into a trap by Edric, who desperately needs to speak with her. She has no other choice but to hear out the man who broke her heart, and is very surprised indeed to hear that when Gabriel sent him to the Mortal world it was to lure her in, but he fell in love with her in the process, and tried to save her from Gabriel. See, Gabriel had one thing on his mind, and one thing only: power. And to get it he set up a plan to marry Tania and use her power to walk between worlds so he could kill the King and take over. But as the truth hits Tania, Gabriel shows up and imprisons Edric in an eternal and unbreakable prison, telling Tania that he is a liar and locking her up in her own room with Rathina. Rathina confesses to having told Gabriel about Edric and her's little meeting, and claims she did not know what he intended to do. She then tries to convince Tania to just do her duty and marry Gabriel, but Tania has a plan to save Edric: she will go to the Mortal world and get the most deadly thing for Faeries, Isenmort, or more commonly known as metal, and break him out of prison. But to do this she needs to control her power. Just when she is about to give up on trying to walk between worlds, she makes it, and finds what she is looking for: a metal sword. But for some reason she can't take it with her back to Faerie, and she gets caught by a security guard in the Mortal world as she is trying to figure out how to take it with her. She runs away from the guard and is rescued at the last second by her sister Eden, who created a powerful portal between the world of Faerie and the Mortal one. As she dove through the portal, Tania realized that the sword had come with her. She and Eden set off into the dungeons to find Edric, Eden waiting outside the gate as a lookout, and Tania going on ahead by herself with her hand wrapped in cloth to protect her from the deadly weapon in her hand. She finally finds Edric, and breaks the spell with a swing of her sword, and helps him out of the dungeons. When they finally make it out (Edric leaning heavily on her for support) they find that Eden has gone, and Rathina is there instead. She helps them back to Eden's tower, but wait a sec, it's not her tower at all, it's the big room Gabriel showed Tania in a vision of a traditional wedding ceremony. Rathina locks Tania and Edric in (betraying her once more), and Tania finds Gabriel at the alter, waiting to be wed. Tania hears a voice (her mother, she realizes), and it reminds her of the poem in her book, the one talking about how she can walk both worlds, and a plan forms in her mind. She goes along with the first part of the ceremony, the hand fasting, and tries to walk between the worlds with Gabriel. But he can't go with her, and she is victorious. See, the poem says she can walk both worlds with her true love in hand, and Gabriel does not truly love her, therefore he can not walk with her. She goes back to the Faerie world to find Gabriel in a rage. He comes after her and is about to imprison her in the same prison as Edric was in, but just then Oberon (her father the King) and Eden show up to save her. Eden had run off to retrieve their father from his trip, and he had come immediately. Gabriel is banished for eternity from their land, and the Kingdom is saved, except for one thing: Eden confessed earlier on that she had killed their mother, that the Queen had begged her for help to get to the Mortal world, and had never come back after going through the portal. But Tania believes her to be alive still, for she did not know who had sent her the book yet, and after all, hadn't she been reincarnated after she died upon coming into the Mortal world five hundred years ago? Why couldn't that have happened with her mother as well? So she decides to go looking in the Mortal world for her lost mother, making Edric believe she is going alone. But just as she's about to disappear, she grabs hold of Edric's hand and brings him with her, proving that their love is true.
The story basically ends there, leaving out all the little details, of course. Frewin Jones did a great job with this story. It is a good mix of love, adventure, and fantasy, all of which I dearly love to read about. If I had to compare this to something, I would have to say maybe something like Tithe, by Holly Black, because of the secret world of Faerie that is concealed from the main characters, who find out later that they are part of that world. Only this is not as dark, for sure. I give this book four stars for the quality of writing, four for the originality of the story line (or "plot"), and three for the speed in which I read it. Overall a three star read, and quite enjoyable, really. I'm pretty sure I'll be buying the sequels to this book.
Blog ya later, Miss Eccentric.