After being on hold at Minuteman for about 3 months, the other book from the May 17 NY Times Book Review article (suggesting fun romance books to read) became available: Thistlemarsh, by Moorea Corrigan. The first book, Stay for a Spell, was available much quicker!
This book was fun to read while covering some very dark issues. It takes place in April 1919, after World War 1, in a universe which used to have Faeries. In fact, the first sentence is: The war did not bring the Faeries back to England.
Highlights:
- There are a few stories from Lady Blakeney’s Tales of Faerie scattered through the book.
- Mouse had hoped to study Faerie Anthropology at university but the war intervened: Faerie anthropology was still a male-dominated field, even a hundred years later.
- First defense of Thistlemarsh against Thornwood’s magic was a massive silken dragon: It crouched in the center of the room, glowing red, gold, and orange in the firelight.
- The dragon eventually shrinks and adopts a glamour of a dog. Which Mouse names Smudge.
- Second defense of Thistlemarsh against Thornwood’s magic was a very agressive mermaid statue in the pond.
- Third defense of Thistlemarsh against Thornwood’s magic was a Tapestry Hunt time loop.
- Mouse’s true name is Misneach.
- Major twist: Mr. Hobb is the Faerie King!
- Mouse to Thornwood, about Carlyle’s statue: It was such a charming wedding gift for your new bride to stumble upon while running for her life.
- The last story, at the end of the book, is really an epilogue: A Rose That Grows from Stone From Lady Dunne-Dewhurst’s Modern Tales of Faerie. Written by Lady Misneach Dunne-Dewhurst of Thistlemarsh Cottage, England, 1926.
- That last story mentions that Mouse’s brother Roger comes to live with Mouse and Thornwood: Half the time, he resided in the present, able to remember his past and talk about the future. The other half, he was somewhere else. Somewhere dark and full of violence. Bombs and mud and gas.
I thought the cover was pretty:
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