Summer King (The Chronicles of Faerie Series) Book

This second book in a series "shimmering with magic, myth, and romance" (Booklist), follows sixteen-year-old Laurel as she tries to understand the cause of her twin sister's mysterious death. Honor believed in Faerie, a parallel land of mischievous immortals. Laurel doesn't. That is, until the fairies come and ask her to take up her sister's failed quest to find the Summer King, a lord who can light the midsummer fire that keeps the two worlds, human and Faerie, cleaved. Laurel must decide to help those whose cause killed her sister, and, in the process, come to believe that there is still magic-and love-in the world.

Lush descriptions of Ireland and Celtic lore make this a satisfying read for travelers to other lands, real and mythic

KLIATT

In the first volume, The Hunter's Moon (reviewed in KLIATT in March 2006), Laurel's twin sister Honor was killed falling from a cliff in Ireland. One year later, Laurel is back in Ireland, plagued by what she can barely believe are faeries. She meets a rather odd roly-poly man who knows an awful lot about how Honor died. She is recruited to help rescue the summer king from his prison with a crow-like people and to force him to light the fire that will save the faerie kingdom. Laurel hopes that by acting as though she believes all this faerie nonsense, she can somehow bring her sister back. As fanciful as it sounds, it all works together to create a magical circumstance to charm any Celtic aficionado. Laurel is so real and grounded in the contemporary, it makes the fantastic seem plausible. The added love affairs from both Honor's past story and Laurel's current dilemma add dimension and interest. The use of actual Irish/Gaelic phrases (which are translated in the back) also adds a unique texture. (And what kid doesn't want to know how to say, "Kiss my ass" in Irish? By the way, lazy readers won't catch this—you only know what it means if you stop to look it up.) For those who already believe or those who can only wish.