Review: The Good Fairies Of New York by Martin Millar

Title: The Good Fairies of New York
Series: N/A
Author: Martin Millar
Genre: Fantasy
Publisher: Soft Skull Press
Received: purchased
Release Date: April 2006   
Pages: 242
Rating:


What is it About?
Heather and Morlag are fairies that were exiled from Scotland.  They have somehow ended up in New York City for the first time.   They come to meet two humans Kerry and Dinnie.  The fairies can get themselves into enough trouble now they find even more as they made friends with these people of New York.

My Thoughts:

These are one of those stories that you have to read a couple of chapters or more to grasp who is who and what is going on.  There were just so many characters and it seemed there was always some sort of trouble these fairies were into.

My version of the book had a intro by Neil Gaiman which I think gave the book more creditability then some ways it deserved.  Not to say I did not like it.  It just took me so long to finally get into the story and understand what was going on.

You are first introduced to the fairies Heather and Morlag in a drunken confused state and already exiled from there home but you don’t find out that they were exiled until half of the book.  You just know that there are other fairies looking for them but you don’t know why.

The people they attach themselves to, Dinnie and Kerry, are probably not the most upstanding citizens to say the lest but it is New York.  Everyone in New York has a dark side it is assumed.  The fairies aren’t really there to help them become a better person...well that is not true they try but it doesn’t always work out for the best.

Heather tries to teach Dinnie how to play a proper fiddle and Morlag trys to help Kerry collect her flowers for an art piece, stealing items from different areas of New York along the way.  Heather steals for Dinnie to live and Morlag steals for Kerry for pleasure.  The stealing gets the fairies in trouble with more stereotypical fairies, the Italian fairies and the fairies from Chinatown.

The book is very different I will say that.  There are many things left unanswered in the book in the end and it had so much going on. There is a humorous feel to it.  It is definitely tongue-in-cheek.  This probably would be a story I would read again to revisit the characters and find things I probably missed the first time around.


Website:

Official Site of Martin Millar
http://www.martinmillar.com/