A Far Better Thing by H. G. Parry

If you’re very fortunate, all a fairy will ask of you will be to steal a bone from a grave. They need them to grow buildings for the Children’s Quarter in the Realm. Wood, stone, trees — these things, even when brought from the mortal world, will shift with the rest of the Realm when planted into Ream soil. Mortal remains are the only things that stay fixed. It isn’t pleasant, the nightmares will be grotesque, you’ll need a very strong drink afterwards, but it will harm nobody. Depending on how you feel about the comfort of young children snatched from their cradles and raised among fairies, you might even say it will do good. [p. 3]

A Far Better Thing is a fairy story by H. G. Parry in which the elements of magic are infused into the backdrop of an historical event — the French Revolution — and a literary classic, A Tale of Two Cities. If you know Dickens’s original novel, then you are familiar with the character of Sydney Carton, the hard-drinking lawyer lurking in the story’s background who eventually steps up to become the unlikeliest of heroes. In Parry’s novel, Sydney is our narrator, but the story he tells stretches into a supernatural dimension. Stolen at birth from the human world and switched out with a changeling, he grew up in the Realm but as an adult he has been sent back to the human world as a lawyer’s assistant and forced to act as the fairies’ servant there, catering to whims that are often capricious or outright cruel.

It was the Year of Our Lord 1780. It was a cold, grey March morning; I was a cold, grey legal advocate, twenty-five years old and not yet dead. I feared this was the best of times; I hoped it could not get any worse. [p. 5]

Carton, who goes by “Memory” in the Fairy Realm, is bitter about the life taken from him and haunted by the death of his childhood friend Ivy, murdered by the fairy he calls Shadow. When Shadow’s machinations bring Memory face-to-face with his changeling Charles Darnay during Darnay’s treason trial, old wounds tear open and long-dormant plans for revenge begin to stir.

My changeling. The replacement the fairies left behind when they took me, over twenty years ago, from my cradle. The man who had been living the life that should have been mine. Something was very, very wrong. We were never supposed to meet our changelings; we were never supposed to learn who we once were. Either there had been a very grave oversight in the Realm, or somebody was deliberately breaking the rules. Whichever it was, I would almost certainly have to pay for it. [p. 9]

I loved watching Sydney grow as a character. He started out as a bitter person, irritated with the fate he was dealt despite having no choice in the matter. As the book goes on, Sydney’s love and caring heart for other people really pulls the threads of the story together. I also consider the descriptions of the fairy realm and its magic system to be fascinating. The fairies in the novel are depicted as having a unique origin and way of life, operating by strict rules and ancient hierarchies.

Fairies don’t steal children — fairies can’t, in fact, steal from humans at all. Their touch can send a mortal to the Realm, but only if the mortal already belongs to them, as I do. No innocent child sleeping in a cradle is the property of fairykind. For a fairy to take possession of a child, it must be handed to them by another mortal. It makes little difference who does the handling: someone in the child’s house could do it, in exchange for a gift or a promise. Failing this, a mortal servant will do just as nicely.

I say I have no choice. I do. I could refuse, and spend the rest of eternity in fairy prison. This is the choice I make instead. [pp. 164-165]

This book will be best appreciated by those who have read Tale of Two Cities, but it’s certainly not essential. Anyone interested in a fantasy set in the French Revolution will enjoy this book.

Check Amazon for more on this book I love.