My heartfelt due to Electrical Monkey Books for gifting me an ARC of “The Depraved Lies of Habren Faire” by NetGalley in trade for my sincere evaluation. It felt much less like receiving a e-book and extra like being handed a key to a secret, rain-dampened gate that opened onto a world of shadowed forests, silver-threaded skies, and tales that may linger in my coronary heart lengthy after the final web page.
UNWAITH AR Y TRO (ONCE UPON A TIME)
Some tales don’t merely invite you in; they name to you, just like the distant echo of a harp over the misted hills, the way in which the wind whispers by gorse and heather. “The Depraved Lies of Habren Faire” is one such story. It’s a darkish, glittering, and deeply Welsh romantasy that slips below your pores and skin just like the shadow of a half-forgotten lullaby, mixing the perilous great thing about Pan’s Labyrinth, the whimsy and world of Jim Henson’s Labyrinth and the Darkish Crystal, the craving of Bridge to Terabithia, and the marvel of The Spiderwick Chronicles and the decadence of Peter Pan however shot by with the center, hiraeth, and mythos of Cymru.
From the primary web page, “The Depraved Lies of Habren Faire” had me totally spellbound, Anna Fiteni’s phrases weaving an eerie, otherworldly ambiance that appeared to curve like mist round my shoulders. Each line shimmered with magic, however it was by no means a protected magic; it was the type that glints with hazard simply beneath the floor, daring you to step nearer. As I learn, I felt that acquainted pull in my chest, hiraeth, a craving for family members lengthy gone, and the worlds hidden in our hills and streams. This e-book is steeped in that very same soul-deep Welsh folklore, populated by whimsical, wild, and typically horrifying beings born from the outdated beliefs of my folks, like Mari Lwyd, the Cyhyraeth, Ceffyl Dŵr, and Pwca. And but, amidst the peril, there’s magnificence, heat, and a fierce heartbeat, a reminder that even the darkest tales can maintain the sunshine.
Set in a small 1800s mining village, Fiteni’s debut is steeped within the grit and poetry of Wales: the coal mud that adheres to your pores and skin, the chapel bells, the cussed survival of a folks whose land and language (iaith y nefoedd, “the language of heaven”) have been stolen and suppressed, but endure. Sabrina Parry, our prickly and imperfect heroine, has discovered to outlive with sharp phrases and sharper wits. Her sister Ceridwen, light, romantic, with a coronary heart too delicate for the world, vanishes into the gwyll (twilight) of the close by woods, forsaking an iron ring. To save lots of her, Sabrina should cross into Eu Gwald, the perilous realm of the Tylwyth Teg. And right here, Fiteni provides us a fairytale appropriately: lovely and rotting, intoxicating and harmful. This isn’t the softened, trendy Fae; these are the tricksters of outdated tales, the type my Tad-cu used to whisper about at bedtime. Those you’d depart milk out for… and pray by no means to fulfill. In Habren Faire, the moonlight hides tooth, and bargains are binding in methods no mortal can fairly escape.
I cried tears, actual, unashamed tears, as a result of this world and these characters have a chokehold on me, the type that leaves you interested by them lengthy after you’ve closed the e-book. Sabrina Parry has steamrolled her means into my coronary heart with all of the grace of a storm battering the coast. She is every thing you’d anticipate a fantasy heroine not to be, and but someway, a lot extra: spiteful, unflinchingly sincere in her lies, a troublemaker who cheats, irritates, and gleefully upends lives when it fits her. She appears to be like the neat little path future has drawn for her sq. within the eye, and doubtless punches whoever dared to recommend she comply with it within the first place. And nonetheless, she is fiercely loving, deeply loyal, the form of one who will knock you out or lower off your finger if it means defending the folks she cares for. Fiteni writes her with the identical rough-edged, beating coronary heart because the March sisters from Little Girls, and her household — her Da, her sister Ceridwen, her Gran- really feel as if they’ve stepped straight out of a literary basic and into this wild fae world. There’s a contact of Alice in Wonderland’s insanity right here too, all swirled with a Tim Burton-esque shadow, making it each unsettling and totally irresistible.
Neirin oh, Neirin, the annoyingly magnetic fae prince who barges into Sabrina’s quest and into my ideas excess of I care to confess. He’s lower from the identical stardust-and-sin material as David Bowie’s Jareth, all self-importance and silver-tongued attraction, without delay dazzlingly intelligent and totally silly. His title feels virtually too noble for somebody so deliciously self-absorbed, so preening, so obsessive about humanity, and but dangerously unpredictable. There’s one thing slick in the way in which his brown eyes catch the sunshine, his lashes casting shadows like spider legs throughout his cheek. His wavy black hair is streaked with silver, gleaming as if somebody dipped a brush in moonlight, and he wears black velvet embroidered with constellations, stars, moons, and planets stitched in silver thread, like he’s sporting the evening sky itself. Fiteni infuses him with an edginess that jogs my memory of Puck from A Midsummer Evening’s Dream; certainly, the entire Ellyllon courtroom has that Shakespearean mix of mischief, magnificence, and lurking peril. Neirin is each a lovable rogue and playful trickster, and the slow-burn pressure between him and Sabrina is a quiet thread woven into the larger tapestry, all of the extra intoxicating for its restraint. With betrayals twisting at nighttime and their banter crackling from irritation to one thing way more harmful, I discovered my coronary heart racing each time they shared the web page.
The LGBTQ+ illustration in The Depraved Lies of Habren Faire is woven as seamlessly into the material of the story because the silver threads in Neirin’s velvet coat, pure, unforced, and all of the extra lovely for it. Fiteni doesn’t deal with queerness as a spectacle or facet be aware; it merely exists right here, alive and unashamed, because it ought to in any world value escaping to. Among the many Tylwyth Teg and all their tricksy variety, selkies are slipping between sea and shore, and mermaids, morgens, whose songs curl by the waves with love and eager for a couple of form of coronary heart. In a story so deeply rooted in Welsh folklore and historical past, it felt like a quiet, defiant act of reclamation, a reminder that our tales, like our folks, have at all times been extra diversified, extra complicated, and extra wondrous than the slender paths historical past tried to restrict them to.
Thematically, Fiteni captures one thing I hardly ever see accomplished so deftly in fantasy: the bittersweet ache of rising up, of leaving dwelling, of returning to seek out it altered, and figuring out you have got been altered too. She threads in grief with quiet grace: grief for the useless, for the selves we depart behind, but additionally for the lack of tales and traditions below the burden of colonisation. As a Welsh reader, I felt my coronary heart clench on the means she honours the mining communities, their sacrifices, their stolen labour, their resilience and on the means she refuses to sand the sides off Welsh id.
“The Depraved Lies of Habren Faire” feels, to me, like a love letter to Wales, a celebration of every thing that makes my homeland what it’s. Too typically, romantasy novels borrow from Welsh fantasy and panorama with out ever acknowledging, not to mention interrogating, the roots of their inspiration. However Fiteni doesn’t simply nod to Wales; she treasures it, honours it, and breathes life into its coronary heart. Giving us, the reader, the relentless rain that slicks the slate roofs, the forests that appear to go on perpetually till they spill into the mist, and the traditional stone castles that rise from the hills like one thing out of a dream. This can be a Wales that’s each actual and legendary, the place the grit of the coal seams lies alongside the shimmer of faerie gentle, and the place each web page feels steeped in that aching, eager for dwelling.
There may be hiraeth in these pages that deep, untranslatable eager for a spot, a time, a sense that may by no means be totally recaptured. And but, there’s hope too. Hope within the fierce, messy love between sisters. Hope in the concept even bargains with the Fae is perhaps survived, if not gained. Hope within the survival of the story itself. Fiteni’s prose is lush with out being overwrought, laced with the cadence of a hearth folktale. She balances whimsy with peril, tenderness with sharp tooth. The ending is because it have to be bittersweet, leaving you breathless, a bit bruised, and aching to stroll once more among the many shadowed groves of Eu Gwald.
There are books that you simply end and bear in mind for his or her plot, after which there are books that depart you with phrases that root themselves deep in your bones. “The Depraved Lies of Habren Faire” gifted me a couple of such line, the type you carry like talismans. “Even whenever you’re as outdated as me, in the event you’re not joyful, you then’re not on the finish,” is a quiet, defiant reminder that life isn’t a straight path to some fastened level, and that pleasure, irrespective of your age, is value chasing till your final breath. “Individuals love us for our efforts”, spoke to the marrow of my being; that we’re valued not solely for achievement, however for the making an attempt, the striving, the reaching past our limits. Fiteni’s reflection that “our lives are small… a speck of mud on an outdated coat or a mayfly in the beginning of its first and solely day, however from them spring a thousand tales” is each humbling and electrifying, a reminder that even the smallest existence generally is a universe to somebody. The notion that “we’re all being utilized by a giant home someplace” is a bitter reality wearing whimsy, hinting on the invisible powers, be they political, financial, or fae, that form our lives with out consent. And beneath all of it is the warning: “All the very best lies sprout from a seed of reality.” It’s a lesson in discernment, in figuring out that what feels actual could solely be the bait, and that when you have got much less, the belongings you maintain, love, belief, and belong matter infinitely extra. These quotes didn’t simply form my studying expertise; they formed me.
For me, “The Depraved Lies of Habren Faire” was like discovering the trail to the worlds I used to dream of as a baby, listening to my grandad converse of the Tylwyth Teg worlds I believed I’d outgrown, however which have been solely sleeping. This e-book woke them, giving me again my sight and for that, I’m grateful.
“The Depraved Lies of Habren Faire” will step into the mortal world on August twenty eighth, 2025, and I wholeheartedly suggest letting it sweep you away the second it does. This can be a story spun of rain and starlight, of hiraeth and heartbreak, of merciless fae bargains and the form of love, fierce, messy, unyielding, that may outwit even the oldest magic. It’s a story to lose your self in and to hold with you, like a secret attraction tucked in your pocket, lengthy after you’ve left the woods behind.
A spellbinding debut — darkish as slate, shiny as starlight, and filled with hiraeth.
