Thorn Jack by Katherine Harbour
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
THORN JACK is a bit of a mind trip. The setting is suitably trippy, the characters are realistic even if they aren’t human, and the romance is tortured. There were points when the writing seemed unnecessarily drawn out, but I couldn’t stop reading. Our heroine, Finn, moves to Fair Hollow with her father for his teaching job, and to escape painful memories of her sister’s suicide and her mother’s death. So we have a fish out of water story right off–but something is different in Fair Hollow. Something sinister, even supernatural. And then Finn meets Jack, and his friends–and Finn becomes caught up in something out of a fairy tale, and not a Disney one.
There are a lot of elements in THORN JACK that will remind readers of other books. The university echoes Hogwarts, the romance treads close to TWILIGHT territory, and the plot, with its labyrinthine politics and shifting loyalties, will call to mind Shakespeare’s tragedies. The story itself is based on the fairy tale of Tam Lin, which I’ve never actually gotten around to looking up, and I should, since a lot of stories use it as a foundation. The characters have realistic lives, and the atmosphere is evocative and dark (which really should be a clue to anyone; when all the houses look abandoned but play host to awesome, hallucinogenic parties, shouldn’t you be suspicious?). Sometimes I was frustrated with the pace of the novel; at one point I would be reading pretty fast, and be interested, but other points the story would turn convoluted and loop back on itself (“hey, wait, didn’t she already do that?”), and my reading speed (and my enjoyment) took a dive. Occasionally the descriptions delved into creepy visuals, sometimes breaking me out of the story with the shock.
For a debut novel, THORN JACK is pretty good. The plot could use a little tightening, and the magic needs a more solid base. There are more stories in this world, so maybe we’ll find out who (what?) the Fatas really are in a future novel. If you like your dark fantasy with a side of gothic mythology, check out THORN JACK. I’m interested to see what else this author has to say.
Received as a free digital ARC via Edleweiss in exchange for an honest review.