"The Fairkind" by Randolph Kuczer [BOOK REVIEW]

Thank you to the author Randolph Kuczer for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The Fairkind tells the coming of age story of Jane, a member of the Fairkind, a tribe that lives in the forest immersed in a myriad of nature-bending powers. It is a surreal mix of plots, characters’ arcs and dialogue and scenery.

The Fairkind’s members have never travelled to the world of humans, which they find oddly alien and, in a way, enchanting.

What makes Jane’s story shine is the secret that a diamond necklace – an unexpected birthday gift – that contains a vision.

At the time of a traditional yearly ceremony in which her powers don’t manifest and cataclysmic, long buried secret comes out, Jane decides to adventure on her own to the forest in search for something else, to get away from the Fairkind. That’s how she meets a kind family of ranchers that accept her and invite her to work and live in their house and lands.

I would like to point out my dissatisfaction with this book as I’m afraid I am not the target audience for this book. Even though I was eager to read this book when the author first contacted me to offer it for reviewing purposes.

I didn’t fall in love with this story, although I liked some parts of it – specially the beginning, which I think it’s well structured. I was picturing something way too different than what it turned out to be.

It tells Jane’s story, a member of the Fairkind that has yet to be gifted her Offering. After she fails at this at the middle of the book – which I find this to be an extremely disappointing thing to me –, she adventures into a new world for her: the world of the humans outside the forest and the Fairkind.

Personally speaking, I loved the premise and liked the earliest scenes in the book. The academy ones and her friends’. To my view, it lacked a rigid, logical structure that made some kind of sense. Some things are nonsensical and feel SO rushed. I do think some scenes needed to be there but it needed its time to bloom.

SPOILERS

The rushed relationship, marriage and pregnancy in barely 20 or 50 pages. I hated the relationship, the early marriage and the final scenes in which she dies and her mother tells her about the Offering. I didn’t understand it, to be fair.

I do think the author has created a really beautiful world.

In my opinion, it needs to be polished and explored more. I want to know more about what’s happening with the Fairkind, its hierarchy and all those visions she gets. They never say what was really happening.