Faery Rebels: Spellhunter, a review

Faery Rebels: Spell Hunter, by R.J. Anderson

Reviewed by Rose Green
audience: anyone, but especially midgrade girls
released in Apri 2009 in the US (already out in the UK under the title Knife)

(This is my review for the First Look program at Harper Collins.)

 

There are books that I read once and like, and there are books that I read, and read a second time, and save on my nightstand so I can sneak back into that world and live it all over again. I think I can safely say that Faery Rebels is in the second category.

 

Knife is a faery; the Queen's Hunter, the one sent outside the Oak, where all the faeries live, to hunt meat. She might be only seven inches high, but she's brave (she stole her blade from the house of the nearby humans), she's skilled (she is the only faery to go into direct combat with the dreaded crows), and she's dangerously curious about humans. Or at least one human: Paul McCormick, the boy she accidentally encountered when they were both children, playing in the same tree. If she wants to remain loyal to her people, she needs to keep her distance from Paul. But the faeries are dying of a mysterious illness called the Silence, and the solution may lie in the human world. Behind her Queen's back she oversteps the boundaries she is supposed to keep by getting to know Paul, and learns that humans are not the scary ogres she's been taught to fear, but creatures curiously…equal to her own people. But that knowledge, of course, comes at a price.

 

Unlike many books starring a community of magical females, Anderson's book does not push men to the sidelines. Valuing and caring for others, not working in isolation, is a major, and refreshing, theme of the book. Knife is gutsy but never shrill, courageous, but never past feeling. Readers looking for strong heroines they might actually want to hang out with should enjoy this book.