The Fae Keeper by H.E. Edgmon
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Thank you to the publisher, Inkyard Press, and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of The Fan Keeper in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
The Gist
I have to be completely honest and confess that I didn’t realise The Fae Keeper is the sequel to The Witch King. Never having read the former, I was very clueless starting the latter.
I read a few reviews and short summaries of the first book to get a general idea of what the story is about. However, I was still very unprepared for the sequel.
Having said that, this review might turn out a little different than my usual ones.
The Details
I can say I am not impressed with the protagonist. I don’t like his attitude, which makes reading this story even more of a chore, because the protagonist is also the narrator.
The narrative is all over the place, mostly because the writing is not very succinct. There are plenty of run-on sentences, sentences that appear incomplete and thoughts that don’t follow the general idea of the paragraph.
It makes for a jarring reading experience. Especially with fantasy it is important to have a good grasp of grammar and sentence structure. I find having to read a sentence two, three, or even four times to really figure out what it means, rips the reader out of the world of the story that is already so much different from ours.
This brings me to another point. I thought The Fae Keeper is suppose to be a fantasy story? But everything seems to be pretty realistic except for using terms that have a set meaning in our world and give them a different meaning in this fantasy world.
For example, an “influencer” is someone, who influences nature around them; not a popular person on social media.
Technology is also “tweaked” to fit into this fae-witch world, yet it is not very well explained.
So, the reader is left to trick themselves into thinking that this fantasy world, with real locations, technology and other terms that remind so much of our world is in fact this made-up fantasy land.
That’s a tall order for a reader, who just wants to escape into a book.
The Verdict
Overall, coming into The Fae Keeper during the second act, so to speak, has some obvious downfalls and my review reflects those.
Looking at just what I read, I have to say that this story is a bit messy and confused me until I was rather agitated.
I have to give this one a pass.
About the Author
H. E. Edgmon (he/they) is a questionable influence, a dog person, and an author of books both irreverent and radicalizing. Born and raised in the rural south, he currently lives in the Pacific Northwest with his eccentric little family. His stories imagine Indigenous worlds and center queer kids saving each other. H.E. has never once gotten enough sleep and probably isn’t going to anytime soon. THE WITCH KING was his debut.
