FAIRIES ARE definitely in fashion this season. If you haven't met a fairy personally, you are certainly missing out. Chris Wooding took us deep into the Phaerie Realm in his spooky story Poison, and Eoin Colfer's anti-hero Artemis Fowl has just met his fairy friends and foes in his third adventure The Eternity Code.
Now Irish author Herbie Brennan has come up with what could well be the ultimate fairy novel. The title says it all. You know what you are going to get in this package before you open it. Brennan's Faerie Wars has everything from a fairy who likes baked beans to the hideous Faeries of the Night, dark spirits who don't come any darker. Here we go again. Humans meet fairies and the stage is set for an adventure that goes all over the place and involves a cast of bizarre characters both human and otherworldly. The novel begins firmly and squarely in the here and now. On page one we meet Henry, our teenage hero. And guess what? He is having problems. He slowly discovers that his parents' marriage is falling apart and he feels confused and alone.
It is the summer holidays and Henry has got a job cleaning out the shed of his 80-year-old friend, Mr Fogarty.
Henry escapes into the shed to get away from his fighting parents and soon finds there is something in the shed that shouldn't be there.
Mr Fogarty's shed is an ancient portal into the Realm of the Faeries. On 'the other side', teenage Prince Pyrgus is in turmoil because of the Light versus Dark conflict that is raging through his homeland.
What can he do to sort out the foul forces that are threatening the entire Faerie Realm? Court intrigue, evil demon plots and unscrupulous Dark Faeries are slowly bringing the whole Realm of the Faeries towards the brink of chaos. Prince Pyrgus has got to act quickly.
Pyrgus decides to seek help by visiting the human world through a magic portal. But Pyrgus does not arrive where planned, things go very wrong and the only person he finds who can help him is human teenager, Henry.