#orfelia

This adapts two Child Ballads - King Orfeo, and the Elfin Knight. The former is probably better known to you as the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice; just switch out gods for faeries and you have the gist. The Elfin Knight is the tale of an elven knight (duh) who comes to his human lover, and gives her impossible tasks. Trivia fact, it’s related to Riddles Wisely Expounded, and both form the basis for the traditional song Scarborough Fair! In the verse highlighted on the back of the book, you can even see the influence - ‘When you can find me an acre of land/Every sage grows merry in time/Between the ocean and the sand/Then you will be united again’. Notice how the second line sounds close to ‘parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme’? People speculate that one evolved out of the other, almost by word-association.

Anyway, this book. Our heroine is Fay, alias Queen Orfeia, from the fae lands who gave up her magic in order to be with a mortal man, who forgot her identity and lived as a human, until she lost her daughter. She journeys through the dreaming-lands to death itself, giving up pieces of herself as she goes to bring her daughter back. I found her to be an interesting protagonist, particularly because she struck a nice balance between disbelieving the magic she is surrounded by and not being annoying about it, learning the rules but still falling foul of them here and there, trying her hardest but not always succeeding.

The story wears its inspirations on its sleeve - there’s a lot of Midsummer Night’s Dream in the fairies here, and the name ‘Orfeia’ evokes Ophelia as much as it does Orfeo. This book was already a curiosity for its contemporary setting; Fay lives in real London, not the historical-fantasy of the other books in this series. The result is a twisting together of centuries of fairytales, stories told and retold and rewritten down the years until you reach this book. There are a lot of small references to the original Ballads and to Shakespeare, as well as others I missed, no doubt. Harris knows her stuff! And she can weave it together into a really engaging little tale.