Buy the hardback from Amazon UK
Junior
Bloomsbury
Hardback £12.99
ISBN: 0747574790
Reviewed by Dennis Hamley
[Armadillo 6.4 Winter 2004]
This is the second book about the Faerie Realm, Herbie Brennan's magical world of huge invention and dizzying complexity. Pyrgus Malvae's father, the old Emperor, is dead, but he won't lie down. Not only that but he seems to have gone over to the other side, the faeries of the Night, led by the dastardly Hairstreak. Meanwhile, back in the Analogue World (ie ours), Henry once again encounters Mr Fogarty, gatekeeper between the worlds, who has a mission for him.
Together they go to the Faerie Realm to help Pyrgus and Holly Blue, his sister, in their struggle to make sure Pyrgus succeeds to the Emperorship and stops the realm from being taken over by Hairstreak. That's the story's basic proposition and from it springs a narrative with a gallery of extreme charcters, wild magic, pleasantly horrible tortures (the Wyrm in Chakhill's bottom for one) and ways of dying leading to a climax which has some of the hallmarks of a rather good computer game. Added to all this, it is often very funny. But keep a bookmark in the cast list at the end because you're going to need it.
There is indeed more than a touch of the Irish yarnspinner in this narrative and it makes for a cracking, if hair-raising, read.