I picked up the first novel, Eccentric Circles, by Rebecca Lickiss because I loved her second work, Never After. It’s clearly a first novel, but the urban fairy tale is still a very fun read.
Piper inherits her grandmother’s cottage that just happens to have a very large garden in the back, a garden which she eventually finds out that leads to fairyland. Piper knows her family is a bit weird, but when she wakes up one morning and has a weird guy dressed like he was going to a Ren Faire in her kitchen, she’s not quite sure what’s going on. Aerlvarim, the freaky elf, isn’t sure that Grandmother Dickerson’s death was a natural one. Piper takes up the investigation, and in the process learns a bit of magic, meets some very interesting dwarves, fairies, and wizards, and discovers the writer inside of herself.
The characters are comical, and not a whole lot of development is built in to the story, but the story is certainly not entrenched in D&D style characters (you know, shazam, big muscles, silly backgrounds, and adventures). Lickiss doesn’t try to put in a bunch of flowery text to fill out her plot, so I have to give her credit for that.
It’s a very light reading, with a plot that borders on a Mary-Sue, but it is still a fun read. I’d say it was a good beach book or a good afternoon’s bit of reading. I am jealous of such a nice, cozy cottage with a stuffed full library. I must have a library in my next house, but maybe, well definitely, without all of the chintz.
Rating: 4 Purrs, for a fun story, a bit of sarcasm in Piper, and a spunky Grandma that reminds me of how my grandmothers used to be
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