Review: Walking on the dark side
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 02 20, 2012
Laura Briggs and Sarah Steinbrenner's The Fairy Godmother's Apprentice is the first book of the Dark Woods Trilogy, a YA fantasy about Baillie Albus, a red-cloaked girl with no family, no hope and little to look forward to in her life, except more nasty, brutish and short. When she learns that she is fairy godfolk, she becomes Faenwich,  apprenticed to the powerful fairy godmother of the legendary Queen Adele.This fantasy is dark, revealing the inhumanity of the fae, and the limits that the magic of even the most powerful fairy godmother has to help her client. Faen's cohort of apprentices, male and female, have their own problems, leaving Faen to her quest to find her client and face whatever challenge helping him or her will bring. At the end of the first novel, she has just begun her journey, just as alone and without support as she was before she was first called to the fairy ring of mushrooms in the forest.I'll be reading the other two books in the series to see where the story takes her, but this is darker than I really like to go. I've walked on the dark side, and I just prefer a little more comic relief. I also like more of a character arc, as Faen seems not to have much in the way of choices, magically or otherwise, though she stoically trudges through and faces down even her fairy godmother mistress.The world is well developed, with lots of conflicts to be resolved later on, as the depth of the darkness is plumbed, and I do want to see what Faen's eventual client will desire, and what the price of the wish will be. This did feel very much like the first part of a much longer work, and not complete in itself, which is not unusual for trilogies.The writing is very good, leaving memorable images, such as what happens to the children stolen and replaced with changelings. If you are looking for fairy dust and happily ever after, don't look here. Still a great read, especially for 99c on Kindle.