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Faerie Tale
701 pages
A chilling reminder that the old tales were meant as warnings, not bedtime stories.
What it feels like
Reading this feels like watching a shadow lengthen across a perfectly manicured lawn. It begins with the warm, golden-hued promise of a fresh start in the country, wrapping you in the comforting rhythms of domestic life. But the atmosphere soon thickens, trading idyllic peace for a creeping, dread-soaked claustrophobia. The narrative takes its time, methodically peeling back the sanitized veneer of modern fairy tales to reveal the bloodthirsty, ancient folklore lurking underneath. As the mundane world fractures, the tension ratchets up into a desperate, visceral fight for survival. It is a perfect fit for readers who crave the specific, slow-burn terror of 1980s horror, where ancient magic bleeds into the everyday and no one is truly safe.
- Mood
- eerie
- dread-soaked
- autumnal
- claustrophobic
- Tone
- foreboding
- earnest
- suspenseful
- grim
- Pace
- steady
- Themes
- fragility of domestic safety · dark folklore · corruption of innocence · ancient grudges · family survival
- The writing
- Grounded and methodical, carefully building a believable mundane world before tearing it apart with visceral, terrifying magic.
- The arc
- Moves from the warm comfort of an idyllic new beginning into a suffocating nightmare of creeping dread and desperate survival.
- Who it's for
- Readers who love 1980s-style horror and dark fantasy where ancient, bloodthirsty myths invade modern domestic life.
Content notes
- child endangerment
- violence
- animal death
- sexual content
- psychological manipulation
About the book
Phil Hastings was a lucky man-he had money, a growing reputation as a screenwriter, a happy, loving family with three kids, and he'd just moved into the house of his dreams in rural of magic-and about to be altered irrevocably by a magic more real than any he dared imagine. For with the Magic came the Bad Thing, and the Faerie, and then the cool...and the resurrection of a primordial war with a forgotten people-a war that not only the Hastings but the whole human race could lose.From the Paperback edition.
Description from Open Library.
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