Scan barcode
A review by alyssa_hollingsworth
Fairest Son by H.S.J. Williams
4.0
I think this is a book young!me would have absolutely gobbled up, so I'm giving it an extra star for that. This novella (or--at least, it's short enough to be a novella?) is a very interesting twist on Snow White, with characters that hook you in even though the story goes by fast. The setting and descriptions are often lovely. Like I said, I could feel 12-year-old-me bouncing up and down in constant delight through the whole thing.
Old!me is more annoying. As a reader, omniscient 3rd person just is not my favorite narration style, and there were multiple times where I felt the story would have benefited from a detailed, close point of view just from our two main leads (Keeva and Idris). Though the flowery language of the book didn't bother me most of the time, if I wasn't reading with younger!me's nostalgic filter the passive voice would have been very difficult to look past. The villain was at times cliched (especially at the end)--the hero at times too on-the-nose as a Christ figure. The pacing moved very fast for me, especially in the relationship department. Perhaps that's fitting for the length of the novel, though. I did believe in the romance, but think I would have shipped it more if I was given more time to feel the characters growing together. The constant shift in terminology (fey, faerie, fair folk, seelie) was sometimes perplexing. There were a few formatting errors (paragraph breaks missing or incorrect ellipses). Yadda yadda. Boring things brought on by an over-analytical mind.
So, in the end, I was entertained for a few hours. It made me smile and sometimes my throat got tight. If I was the book's editor, I'd probably write a dissertation of ideas--but as a reader who just happened upon the book, I was not disappointed.
Old!me is more annoying. As a reader, omniscient 3rd person just is not my favorite narration style, and there were multiple times where I felt the story would have benefited from a detailed, close point of view just from our two main leads (Keeva and Idris). Though the flowery language of the book didn't bother me most of the time, if I wasn't reading with younger!me's nostalgic filter the passive voice would have been very difficult to look past. The villain was at times cliched (especially at the end)--the hero at times too on-the-nose as a Christ figure. The pacing moved very fast for me, especially in the relationship department. Perhaps that's fitting for the length of the novel, though. I did believe in the romance, but think I would have shipped it more if I was given more time to feel the characters growing together. The constant shift in terminology (fey, faerie, fair folk, seelie) was sometimes perplexing. There were a few formatting errors (paragraph breaks missing or incorrect ellipses). Yadda yadda. Boring things brought on by an over-analytical mind.
So, in the end, I was entertained for a few hours. It made me smile and sometimes my throat got tight. If I was the book's editor, I'd probably write a dissertation of ideas--but as a reader who just happened upon the book, I was not disappointed.