

Given that Taylor's series started life as a complement to her range of faerie ornaments, I was very worried that the tweeness would be too much to bear, especially after meeting the Speshul Heroine with a Great Destiny, but I was soon surprised to find just how much I enjoyed the books they are very much better than first impressions might suggest. Since their saccharine flower-fairy Victorian incarnation morphed into Tolkien's proud and stately elves, there's been quite a revival of the original mediaeval conception, where the small folk are amoral and potentially nasty tricksters, but there's still too often a hint of Disneyfication hanging around the species like a bad smell.


I have to confess to a slight wariness regarding faeries.
