How the King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories is a companion book to Holly Black’s Folk of the Air series, this time following High King Cardan, one of the series’ more compelling characters.
Evie’s life may not be normal, but she likes to think it is, even if she works for the International Paranormal Containment Agency, her former boyfriend is a faerie, she can’t help but fall for an incarcerated shape-shifter, and she is the only one who can see through the glamours worn by paranormals. But when she learns that she is at the heart of an age-old prophecy that foretells the destruction of all paranormal creatures, she realizes her life may not be what she thought it was. So much for normal.
Hazel lives with her brother, Ben, in the strange town of Fairfold where humans and fae exist side by side. The faeries’ seemingly harmless magic attracts tourists, but Hazel knows how dangerous they can be, and she knows how to stop them. Or she did, once.
At the center of it all, there is a glass coffin in the woods. It rests right on the ground and in it sleeps a boy with horns on his head and ears as pointed as knives. Hazel and Ben were both in love with him as children. The boy has slept there for generations, never waking.
When Kit is mistaken for an infamous highwayman who happens to be his master, he is catapulted into a world of magic and wonders. Bound by magical law, he must complete his former master’s quest to rescue a fairy princess from an arranged marriage. His task is not easy, he must contend with the feisty princess, attacks by goblings, and a map that shows his destiny as a man hanged on the gallows.
Hazel lives in an out-of-the-way town where faeries are real. The locals know enough lore to stay safe and be respectful, so for the most part the magical creatures leave them alone. Not so much with the tourists, who come because of the stories and to see the horned boy who has been sleeping, unchanged, in a glass coffin in the forest for generations and who sometimes end up dead.
