A review by barb4ry1
Faerie Apocalypse by Jason Franks

3.0

In this Land it pays to be careful how you ask questions, and how you answer them. Falsehood will destroy you; truth will devour your bones.

It's an odd book. I've picked it because of the great cover and interesting but terse synopsis. Twisted and dark fairy tales appeal to me. This one certainly doesn't lack darkness nor does it shy away from assaulting the reader with strong punches.

No, I wasn't KO'd but my mood and the last scraps of belief in innate human goodness were.

The book subverts The Quest trope - there's more than one quest described on the pages of Faerie Apocalypse but we start with a classic one. A young man travels to Faerie Land in order to find most beautiful and perfect queen. He's not interested in her personality, though. She has to be physically perfect. His intentions remain unknown for a while. One is clear, though. He's insane and all he leaves behind him is the trail of the dead. It's not a spoiler. It's in the title.

The story is divided into four main arcs (I oversimplify things) that focus on different characters. First two arcs are ultraviolent and gruesome and you may ask yourself what's the point of this butchery. It'll be explained, partly, in the second half of the book.

The prose was pretty lean although at times it became quite descriptive, like here:

Late one afternoon a strange grey washed away the sky. The bright hot ball that served this particular Realm as a sun disappeared, although the light it shed remained, pallid and thin. Two great storm-fronts roiled over the hills, one from the direction the mortal reckoned to be east and the other from the west. Lightning crackled between the cloud masses and the thunder rolled like war drums.

At times, though, some awkward similes appear. Like this one:

Lianas hung from the branches like intestines looped from a butcher’s block.

It's taken out of the context but I'm not sure if it works for me. Not really.

On the other hand, some parts were deeply philosophical and valid questions were raised in simple sentences:

Language bound his thoughts to his deeds, his memories to his mind; the world outside to the world within. Malo came to hate it—this structure that interposed itself between his senses and his consciousness. It enslaved him; it concealed its truths from him; it bound him to a life of squalor and misfortune.

It's an interesting topic, the language and the way in which it shapes our experiences.

Faerie Land has a reflexive relationship with our world, built on our dreams and our stories. There's little in terms of classic world-building - geography and setting changes in and on itself and can be described as mutable. It can be influenced by those who are willing to do so.

The Faerie Folk are diverse and some of them can be as perverse as humans. Contrary to us, though, they're immortal.

And now it's time to discuss characterization. The author made a risky move. He describes characters by their functions / stereotypical roles (Magus, Mortal, Warrior etc.). As a result, all characters remained unrelatable and, at least some of them, repulsing to me. Take a Magus for example. Whatever his real intentions are, the only outcome of his doings is death and destruction. It was interesting, and shocking, to read his part of the story but after finishing it I only know he's a despicable person.

The Faerie Realms were not subject to the rigors of proper physics, and mortal technology would not function there…but he was a magus, and he felt that it was his right, if not his duty, to violate the natural order as he pleased.

Why? How? What for? No idea. I mean, I can make assumptions but the author chooses to focus on other aspects of the storytelling. As a result, if you'll ask me about the character (and other characters pictured in the book as well) in a month, I'll just tell you he was a bad and petty person. He's not memorable in any other way.

The same is mostly true for other characters - they serve more as plot devices or to make a point than to develop and feel real.

So, should you read it?

It depends. I'd like you to try it, especially if you feel tired of recycled ideas and plot lines. It's a dark fairy tale that feels fresh and unsettling. It's dense, non-linear and twisted. It plays with the tropes of quests and fantasy violence.

I liked it but due to little enjoyment I got from the first half of the book, I can't praise it.