Fierce and observant Jude is utterly unaware of the currents that swirl around her.

Black’s latest looks at nature and nurture and spins a tale of court intrigue, bloodshed, and a truly messed-up relationship that might be the saving of Jude and the titular prince, who, like Jude, has been shaped by the cruelties of others. Brought up among the Gentry, Jude has never felt at ease, but after a decade, Faerie has become her home despite the constant peril. Human Jude (whose brown hair curls and whose skin color is never described) both hates and loves Madoc, whose murderous nature is true to his Faerie self and who in his way loves her. Jude-broken, rebuilt, fueled by anger and a sense of powerlessness-has never recovered from watching her adoptive Faerie father murder her parents. Part mourning and healing tale, part restless ghost story, the strengths here are Lexi’s sophisticated characterization (strong, sad, fiercely protective) and the extraordinary sense of place.īlack is back with another dark tale of Faerie, this one set in Faerie and launching a new trilogy. As a mob mentality unfolds in the village, tracker Lexi works harder and harder to defend the stranger and find the children. Lilting, humming, high-pitched things, filling the space around me so that even when all seemed quiet, it wasn’t.” Soon, however, the wind and moor descriptions become retroactively crucial, weaving themselves into the content of the plot. Early on, the text is highly descriptive of the setting, dedicating almost too many words to the heathery moor hills and the wind that “sang me lullabies. Each night, a village child hears the wind singing a tune and climbs out the window to play on the moor, vanishing before morning. Lexi’s late father taught her that witches are as good, bad and various as humans, so she trusts the witch sisters who live at the edge of her village unlike most of the sullenly insular villagers, she doesn’t blame a lurking stranger when children start disappearing. This highly atmospheric debut crackles with tension and has a shivery horror tang.

The near witch