Described by one of my favourite book people as “long, overly pervy and wildly dated”, this book was a great time whilst also being all of those things.

My previous experience with Feist was the Riftwar Saga and to say my expectations were so outrageously off to the left is an understatement. Faerie Tale is an urban fantasy (kind of) about a well-off family who buy the farm (literally) and find themselves afoul of the fair folk. Chaos ensues. 

I genuinely had a great time with this book and I find myself a little unsettled by that. There were so many things going on that I normally hate: weird sexualisation of a young woman (specifically but also just generally), a lot of casual sexism, some wildly dated and inappropriate language, and a plot line that took over half the book to develop. And yet… it worked. It was so fucking pervy - especially with the younger characters - and yet it also dealt with related elements quite well. It was very of its time with language and attitudes but I can excuse that because I’m reading it now through a modern lens. And the slow plot line… well, it was really slow. But I don’t hate that and I think part of its slowness was how I read it (slowly, with multiple interruptions). 

I think my biggest enduring criticism of this book is that it info dumps a lot and way more content than needs to be delivered for the reader to understand the context of the story. Like it was so cool that there were historical elements that went all the way back to ancient Persia BUT that knowledge genuinely had no impact on the plot and definitely didn’t need to go on for as long as it did. 

I also found a lot of the dialogue was a bit stagnant - it often felt like it was written either as a method of delivering information with no appreciation of the context, or as a means to an end with little awareness of the journey. Again, not the most egregious thing, but it did leave the characters feeling a little flat at times (which was a pity bc they had a lot of potential). 

At the end of the day, I really enjoyed this book. I would definitely recommend it to others although with a couple of caveats (mentioned above). You just gotta look aside from the silliness and enjoy the ride. 

This book deviates from the author's typical genre of high fantasy filled with epic combat, great mages, and grand noble houses.  Instead, this book is set within the "real world" where magic is considered lore.  All though each character is important to the story, they are somewhat bland and cookie cutter.  

Character interactions can be somewhat "clunky".  Having read this book years ago, I attempeted to revisit this book in audio format.  The clunky dialogue is easier to read than listen to.

The story and the overall mystery are the main draw.

As a single read, I would recommend.