Although I've talked a lot about fairies and death, my favorite fairy is Melusine, a creature that is somewhat mysterious and who probably inspired this beautiful painting by Isobel Gloag. It's called The Enchantress. Melusine has an interesting story, both in myth and history. I think one of the better essays is this one, which talks about how she might have been a real person, like King Arthur, who developed over time into something more. I have incorporated her into my fiction in more ways than one, mainly because I like her name and am completely haunted by this painting. Also she makes a brief but important appearance in one of my favorite novels, Possession by A.S. Byatt. I always make allusions of some sort in my work to fiction or literary characters that I love.
I think it's safe to say that I write about ordinary people who get swept up in extraordinary circumstances. Imagine a knight, somehow seduced by this creature, then married to her, having children with her, creating a dynasty even, only one day to discover she was not mortal, and that having united with her, he faced something of a curse. That is great conflict. I also imagine this for young girls, tempted by fairies and demons and others. However, I am very much Team Human. Some very good stories have been destroyed by endings where the human crossed over into the other world, embracing something outside their natural mortal world, without facing any kind of consequences, as though leaving behind mortality is very easy and desirable. The same goes for girls and boys who learn they have secret powers, gifts that have no price or consequences. How does that happen? Why is it that good people never win these days? I don't know these answers but I have thought about them a lot while writing my stories.
I like the idea of being human and part of Nature. I think it's okay.
That's why fairies are interesting to me. They are not human. They are not us. They are part of a long history of human desire. We created them. Understanding why we did this is what makes folklore and fairy tales so important and relevant, even in an age where people feel very modern, secular, and free of superstition.
At the moment, it's difficult to discuss Briar Queen in the way that I wrote about Thorn Jack. I don't want to spoil the story for new readers. Like Thorn Jack, the story's narrative moves around Finn Sullivan and her mysterious love, Jack, but in a completely different way. We are no longer tangled up in their discovery of each other and the focus of the story is not how they find hope and love with one another. This is a completely different kind of plot.
This is expected of second books in a series. Unfortunately, first books are always about first encounters, first meets, first kisses, first impressions. The reader is always terribly engaged in these first moments, but they cannot be replicated in any series.
In the trilogy format, authors are always faced with a complicated set of choices. Series will end with the third book, and the third book is usually very powerful. Many series suffer from second book syndrome, which is nothing more than an author making a decision to write a story that will connect the beginning drama with the final. It's not always easy.
Briar Queen is very much a second book, but carries its weight and position by developing the world of the Fata. It is also about the consequences of Thorn Jack's core action. The rest of the book is one long journey where Finn and Jack find themselves on a difficult mission that will have grave consequences for many of the characters of this trilogy. The heart of Briar Queen belongs to Harbour's skillful worldbuilding and not her characters this time, although we meet some pretty nasty fairies, located in a world called the Ghostlands.
I found this book full of sorrows I did not expect, and a twist in the story that spoke to my feelings about how troubled fairies can be. There is mischief and deceptions.
My greatest pleasure in this story is Moth, a wonderful fairy who has a shadowed and complex past. Moth is old, older than Jack, and even by the end of the story, we are not sure who and what he is. Many of the narrators are unreliable and not to be trusted when it comes to the history of the Fata.
Harbour's gift as a writer is her vivid imagination, her willingness to embrace her uniqueness and to remain true to her fairies. As I've written before, her fairies are dark, decadent, and masters of deception. They hold no allegiance, not even to one another at times. They can be ruthless and yet, they are so incredibly charming and beautiful, so seductive in their longings and desires.
I'll come back to this story again and talk more about it in detail when I have read it a few more times. I'll do it at a time when I can write about events which would spoil the story for new readers.
Highly recommended. See my post on Thorn Jack here.
Thorn Jack, by Katherine Harbour, will always be one of my favorite novels, the ones that I admire for a variety of reasons as a writer. Technically, it is near flawless and that's quite remarkable in itself. While very accessible, it accomplishes many things at once, part love story, part family drama, part fairy tale, part phantasmagorical dream, part secret history. It is riddled with symbols and themes, and literary allusions. And that is not all. Fair Hollow, the decadent setting, with it's falling leaves and scented roses, its forbidden woods, and those gorgeous decaying houses haunts the imagination. On the surface, one could describe this as a simple love story, the tale of a young girl who meets the dark brooding guy, and falls into a dangerous situation, but Thorn Jack moves beyond love into the mythic heart of what it means to be human in a world where death is the final end. Fairies are the metaphor here, although Harbour has given them a world and complexity of their own. Fairies live in the night. In the day, they are nothing, and Harbour may have not deliberately planned it, this deep conflict, this dichotomy between the two, but that is aching heart of this book and it is not only striking but primordial. There is also that outer gaze that I often write of when concerning fairies and their mythology. The center of this story is set around Finn Sullivan and her grief for her sister, Lily Rose. Finn has moved to Fair Hollow, the home of her deceased grandmother, and it is here that she sees Jack for the first time. Jack, as metaphor, is the goblin of Christina Rossetti's mysterious and allegorical tale of sisters tempted by the Other. He is dark, dangerous, and dead. What he wants is not love, but life. The outer gaze gives us a glimpse of how desperate fairies are to be among the living, how fairies use the living, and how the dead really envy those alive and bleeding. Jack, himself, was once human. In Finn, he sees a small part of his human self. The fact that he is conflicted in Finn's seduction is given validity by the outer gaze of his past and what it means to be a "Jack." Harbour excelled here. Otherwise this story would have been too simple. That Finn is drawn to Jack resonates in a young girl, who is grieving the death of both a sister and a grandmother, who is transported from the comforts of home and hearth to the dangerous woods of place and longing. Finn has this ferocious longing to connect to something outside the pain she is feeling. That, in itself, is why this novel works so beautifully. Jack is her catalyst. I don't find their love story sentimental in anyway. Jack's desire for life is an easy opening for the other human desires. Finn's desire for life is much the same. Once the connection is there, it becomes a dangerous road, because Jack is not a living breathing thing, nor is he able to live in the light. At times, he is only a dream, and at times, he is nothing. There's meaning there. Harbour develops it by giving us a complex history of the fairy who seduced Jack into her world and it is here that we are given a retelling of Tam Lin. Unlike other similar tales of good young girls and beautiful dangerous boys, Finn is Team Human. She never wants to go to the Other. Instead, she brings Jack back to life. Of course, the deed requires a heavy price and because Thorn Jack is one of three books in a series, we know that while love is a powerful thing, it cannot fix all problems. There are other elements I adore in this book, the fact that reason is often fixed against madness, instead of the old fashioned good versus evil, the fact that human desires, our personal enclosures and escapes are shown in how the fairies function. However, these are some gorgeous and decadent fairies, so colorful and seductive that I found myself, several times, siding with them emotionally. That's dangerous. Fairy Land is a mad, mad place. No human should want to live there, but I was tempted. I suppose that is the heart of all good fairy stories, the fact that we humans envy the immortal dead in some ways. The latter is another post altogether and Freudian. In closing, I want to add that no matter what happens in this series, Thorn Jack is a perfect standalone book, written in a dreamy descriptive language what gives the outer gaze a life. We see, somewhere at the edge of our vision, the powerful Otherness, so dark and seductive, that we can do nothing but long for it.
Time is a dream, a destroying dream. It lays great cities in dust, it fills the seas. It covers the face of beauty, and tumbles walls.
Conrad Aiken, The House of Dust
