Faerie Wars (The Faerie Wars Chronicles, #1)

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Faerie Wars (The Faerie Wars Chronicles #1)

by Herbie Brennan

3.65 · rating details · 3,161 ratings · 239 reviews

When Henry Atherton helps Mr. Fogarty clean up around his house, he expects to find a mess and a cranky old man; what he doesn't expect to find is Pyrgus Malvae, crown prince of the Faerie realm, who has escaped the treacherous Faeries of the Night by traveling to the human world through a portal powered by trapped lightning. An egomaniacal demon prince, greedy glue factor...more

Published February 4th 2008 (first published April 2nd 2003)

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Jan 10, 2010

Amelia, the pragmatic idealist rated it

Shelves: series-books, ya-kids-teen, bloomsbury

Okay, I'm going to give my critique! I still am glassy-eyed from staying up *literally* all night to finish this book! When you cannot pry a book from your fingers, that means it's good, right? I certainly think so.
- To be fair: This is a down-the-line sci-fi/fantasy, IMO. As someone who has extremely little patience for and limited understanding of fiction technology, I could have done with less "science" but that's a person-to-person thing. My little brothers read this series...moreOkay, I'm going to give my critique! I still am glassy-eyed from staying up *literally* all night to finish this book! When you cannot pry a book from your fingers, that means it's good, right? I certainly think so.
- To be fair: This is a down-the-line sci-fi/fantasy, IMO. As someone who has extremely little patience for and limited understanding of fiction technology, I could have done with less "science" but that's a person-to-person thing. My little brothers read this series and recommended it to me, and they both loved it for these aspects. I give the author props for just being so darn creative! Creativity, to me, should generally outweigh and outshine the more technical aspects of writing, like your "literary elements" and your actual writing style. This is most certainly a "third person omniscient" story in that you as the reader follow literally EVERY character. Most 3rd persons don't do this: they pick one or two characters to follow and you learn about other events through their subsequent discoveries. Sometimes I felt a bit overwhelmed by the back-and-forth coverage, but as the story progressed, it became very necessary to see the plot unfold from different directions. So bravo to that, Brennan! It just took me a few hundred pages to get used to!
- Characters: I tend to like "good" good guys and "bad" bad guys, so when I read other reviews that criticize Brennan for not being "complex enough," I dont give those much weight. Evil is very one-dimensional. The baddest villains are the ones that really have no complexity: they're just bad to be bad. And thank god, not every protagonist is Holden Caulfield. I found the main protagonist - Henry Atherton - very enjoyable and relatable, if not a little dorky. He reminds me of a modern Taran from (IMO the greatest childrens fantasy EVER) The Chronicles of Prydain in that he's sweet but maybe a tad dorky (girls, we all know boys like this!). I can certainly deal with the "lovable loser" character type.

**I feel like I do need to address this aspect of the story, as everybody does**
- Umm okay I found the series in the YA section, and to me that's a very appropriate place. This is a very action-packed series, and yeah there's conflict: and not wishy-washy glossed over conflict, either. These are bad guys who do bad things. I wouldn't use the word "pervasive," but there certainly are violent aspects of the story. To me, I didnt find the violence out of place or even unnaturally heightened...it had a purpose: to be contrasted with good. To make the reader think: "Wow, these dudes need to be stopped". I wouldnt recommend this series for anyone under middle-school (with the exception of the above-average-intelligence 5th grader).

CON:
- Really, there's only one definite negative I have to gripe about: This is FANTASY--I don't want to read about melodramatic, "Eastender-like" family drama! It is necessary to a point to set up the emotional characterization of Henry: we need to see a bit of his background in order to understand and relate to his situation. What we dont need is over-the-top melodrama, which IMO is what we are given. It seems as though it's not good enough for Brennan to present a relatively normal family problem: he has to write a rather specific and uncommon family situation that to me was just put in to be a "shock factor." There's no development, no substance, because that's not the point. So why bother?
Anyway, that's my beef.

Overall? Excellent. I will proceed to the next book in the series promptly! This is not exactly a well-known series in the US, though a few of my English friends have read the books and quite enjoyed them. If you are reading this review, give the FAERIE WARS CHRONICLES a try! (less)

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Dec 19, 2008

Martha rated it

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I recently picked up several fantasy books in the young adult range, this one being the first. The book begins with our main hero, Henry, a young boy living in England. Henry is friends with a weird and highly paranoid old man, is saving up for an ipod, and just found out that his mother is having an affair with his father's secretary. A bit harsh for an opening, but there's certainly no doubt that Henry lives in the real, modern-day world.

Then there's Pyrgus, the other hero of the s...moreI recently picked up several fantasy books in the young adult range, this one being the first. The book begins with our main hero, Henry, a young boy living in England. Henry is friends with a weird and highly paranoid old man, is saving up for an ipod, and just found out that his mother is having an affair with his father's secretary. A bit harsh for an opening, but there's certainly no doubt that Henry lives in the real, modern-day world.

Then there's Pyrgus, the other hero of the story. His world sounds a bit older, maybe 17th/18th century, and magic exists in this world. Pyrgus is also a prince, next in line for the emperor's throne. We like Pyrgus because he doesn't want to be emperor; he spends most of his time dressed incognito and rescuing (i.e. stealing) mistreated animals, including a basket of kittens (aww) from an evil glue factory. I know, a bit much, but the rescue part was very exciting.

How the two worlds come together is rather interesting, combining magic and science in a fairly coherent way. Pyrgus travels to Henry's world through a portal, as both worlds exist in different dimensions. But something goes wrong -- when Pyrgus gets through the gate, he's quite tiny and has grown a set of wings. Later it's discovered that this transformation is temporary, and that the denizens of Faerie (Pyrgus's world) don't normally have wings.

I have to admit that bothered me a bit. The Faerie world and it's people are not very different from the modern world, making the term Faerie a bit of a misnomer. In fact, the title Faerie Wars is pretty awful -- the book was much better than I expected by the title alone. But come on, these people aren't fairies. Faeries. Whatever, they're normal people in a fantasy world, but that's about it.

I found the book very engaging, and read it rather quickly. There are some wonderful characters and truly fabulous villains, and lots of descriptive yet succinct writing. I would have given this book 4 stars (I almost did), but I felt the book tried to do too much. In addition to the two worlds, a third comes into play about halfway through the book, the world of demons (called Hael in the book). Although fascinating, especially the Demon Prince, it just got to be too much. When the demons' 'true' forms were described as skinny gray aliens with big eyes, I thought, 'Right, this book is getting one less star for that.'

The book ends on a bit of a cliffhanger, and I enjoyed the first one enough so I've picked up the second one already.(less)

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Sep 23, 2011

Kassi rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: young-adult, read-in-2011, urban-fantasy

I think I would have liked this much better if I were under the age of 15, appreciated British humor, and was more interested in action & adventure instead of just science fiction/urban fantasy. It's a pretty good story, with a bit of silly humor and a bit of potty humor (boils on the bottom). The villains were laughable in their ridiculousness and the younger characters really took charge and made the important and adult decisions. Some scenes may be unsuitable for particularly sensitive childr...more

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Aug 14, 2011

Tip rated it

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Shelves: fantasy

Picked this book up at the dollar store because I love fantasy novels and anything to do with faeries.

One reviewer said there was a lot of point of view changes that happened too fast and made it hard to keep up. I do not agree. There were a few times where the point of view changed quickly (but never in the same scene).

To the best of my knowledge, there are only four different points of view used throughout the entire story, and only three of them frequently. If you rea...morePicked this book up at the dollar store because I love fantasy novels and anything to do with faeries.

One reviewer said there was a lot of point of view changes that happened too fast and made it hard to keep up. I do not agree. There were a few times where the point of view changed quickly (but never in the same scene).

To the best of my knowledge, there are only four different points of view used throughout the entire story, and only three of them frequently. If you read a lot of plot heavy fiction novels that juggle quite an assortment of main characters and develop multiple subplots you should have no trouble with this book as it's not that complex.

The main characters are developed enough for them to be interesting but not as thoroughly developed as in say, The Fable haven Series characters. But, despite that, its an interesting story.

I am not going to review the plot of the story as so many people have done so already, but, there are a few things I found interesting regarding the details in the story.

I knew of Herbie Brennan before this because I had seen a video of him talking about a ceremonial magic practice he took part in (in the real world). I study ceremonial magic a little and found it interesting that he threw a few pieces in from rites used in the real world into this fantasy story.

Sure, it is blown way up and out of proportion from anything that happens in the real world--that's the fun with fantasy. If you have read books like The goatia or any other type of grimoire involving evocation magic you will be able to tell the author has studied it too and draws inspiration from that for his story. I'm sure the Harry Potter book burners would love to get their hands on this (especially if they knew the author has studied real magic.) But I guess they are too caught up burning some other type of fiction book. LOL.

Anyway I think it is worth a read. It may not be the best fantasy book I have ever read but it was worth the time and I plan to read the next books in the series.

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Apr 21, 2009

Steph Su rated it

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Shelves: own

After someone tries to kill Pyrgus, the Crown Prince of the faerie world, his father, the Purple Emperor, sends him off into the Analogue World (aka the world we humans live in) for safety from their political enemies, the Faeries of the Night. However, the translator they used to send Pyrgus into the other world has been sabotaged, sending Pyrgus drastically off course, landing him in the middle of present-day England, in the backyard of a paranoid old Mr. Fogarty. Mr. Fogarty enlists the help ...more

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Sep 21, 2011

ke-sha rated it

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(Contains Spoilers)I really liked this book. It was slow in the start but picked up some steam. My favroite Character in this book by far is the old guy Fogarty He was the most Hilarious and loveable character. Pyrgus at first was annoying and frankly for a while there I was sideing with the people who wanted to kill him(yeah he got on my nerves that much) but the feeling lessened somewhat over the course of the book.I hope it continues to lessen over the course of the next book. I really like H...more

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Mar 08, 2009

Abby rated it

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Shelves: paranormal, young-adult

This was a pretty decent book, though not something that gripped me from start to finish, even though I had hoped it would. It's difficult for me to write anything less than a stellar review, but in all fairness, I'll be honest. "Fairie Wars" was not written for me and mine. This book would fit very nicely on the shelf of a young guy - maybe a Tolkien fan who's looking to upgrade his geek standing (not that there's anything wrong with Tolkien, I'm just borrowing the stereotype here...)...moreThis was a pretty decent book, though not something that gripped me from start to finish, even though I had hoped it would. It's difficult for me to write anything less than a stellar review, but in all fairness, I'll be honest. "Fairie Wars" was not written for me and mine. This book would fit very nicely on the shelf of a young guy - maybe a Tolkien fan who's looking to upgrade his geek standing (not that there's anything wrong with Tolkien, I'm just borrowing the stereotype here...).
It's an odd mix of fantasy and science fiction. Without giving away plot details it's hard to elaborate, but I will say this: We call them aliens, they identify them as demons. We have engineers, they have wizards.
Story-wise, it has a fairly solid mis-placed fairy prince idea, with a few subplots that more or less get tied in by the end. There is a bit with the MC henry (well, one of them) and his parents that seemed quite forced. Rather like Henry lacked depth, so an additional subplot, and a sister, was added. The other subplots seemed to take up a lot of space in the writing itself, and often came across as confusing. I found myself wondering "Why does this matter?" even as they technically came together toward the end. This problem was no doubt complicated by the many point-of-view changes throughout the story. The POV changed quite frequently, and there was no consistent MC to fall back on. Technically, I suppose Henry got more "screen time" than the others, but with the other characters each having a turn on the POV wheel, it was still dodgy, and often confused the story's timeline.
I do have to give the author props for his characterization of Henry - he is very much a young adolescent boy, and the glimpses into his mind are well-done (I wish there were more of them).
Again, this book, given to the right audience, will likely be very much enjoyed. It's success and continuing success (and sequels!) are proof enough of that. It would be very much at home in the library of a middle school, even high school - and it's probably well past time guys got to play around with this Fairy-fad. But keep in mind, although it LOOKS like it should fit in with "City of Bones" or "Tithe," it's a much different, oddly traditional take on science fiction and fantasy- heavy on the science, but not quite steampunk, either.
I think I'll give it to my brother.
PS: It's British - which is kind of fun, after you get over the weird punctuation... ;-)(less)

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May 31, 2009

Tortla rated it

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Shelves: dragons, chidderbooks

One star off for spelling it "faerie." Otherwise, this book was really good. An absorbing fantasy-world-meets-real-world story that manages to go kind of dark places without the oh-look-at-me-I'm-so-gritty feel some books like that have (*cough cough* Tithe *cough*). I can definitely see the similarity to Harry Potter, what with its being about a young British boy whose world is disrupted by a parallel world of magic. But the way magic is treated in this is so deliciously matter-of-fac...more

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Sep 28, 2010

Andy rated it

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I'm sorry, but this fantasy and science-fictionish story is terrible. The three main characters, Henry, Pyrgus, and Blue, are cheap variations of a typical hero. None of them are very good at being heroic. And Mr Fogarty and the orange-skinned dwarf are really the same character in different dimensions. The demons and bad guys... it was terrible.

I get that the book is supposed to be charming and it should appeal to younger readers--but then again I hope not. Is that supposed to appea...more

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Aug 26, 2009

Jose Prado rated it

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Fearie Wars by Herbie Brenan is a wonderfull book filled with mystery, action, magic, science, and love. It all starts out with Henry who found out a magical faerei in the back yard of Mr.Fogarty, an old man who believes in faeries and aliens and thinks that the CIA is always after him. After a few days with the little Fearie boy (Pyrgus) they realize that he is actually a prince from another world sabotaged and nearly killed by many Nighters in his world.

With the faerie boy there He...more

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Jun 17, 2011

Mari rated it

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Shelves: 2011-reads, adventure, fairy-tale, fantasy, humor

Not trying to sound cliche, considering Eoin Colfer did review the book positively, but it does have that style reminiscent of Colfer's Artemis Fowl series. Faerie Wars mixed the real world, the faerie realm, and science--yes, science (I'm pretty sure I saw "particle physics" mentioned at least once!)--all in one pretty little salad bowl. And then the dressing that is the plot got poured into the mix. It was funny, it was cute, and it was definitely exciting to read from beginning to e...more

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May 16, 2011

Karen rated it

Shelves: fantasy

I really liked this and do plan to read more of the series. It looks like there are quite a few more books ahead - we'll see if the story gets old.

But for now, I feel like the plot was smart. The writing not only held my interest but made me think. Like a puzzle, it was put together piece by piece, but not always in the order you'd expect. It left me satisfied, but wanting more. I liked all of the main characters. I liked Henry. He is a kid, not a super star, but not an idiot either...more

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Jul 21, 2011

Kay rated it

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After hesitating whether to continue reading this book after having read the first few chapters, I am glad I did because it was pretty amazing.Despite the weird beginning where kittens are used as glue, there is a boy thinking of flying pigs and a mother who is having an affair with another woman, the remainder of the book was surprisingly good.

This book had a unique combination of traditional fantasy blended with the modern advances of science. Though I would like to make a comment o...more

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Jan 23, 2009

Jaemi rated it

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Shelves: fantasy, ya-fiction, series, faeries, scifi

Henry Atherton thought he was living a pretty normal life. Sure, working for Mr. Fogarty could be strange, as the man was completely paranoid, but all in all things were good. He even made his cardboard pig fly–and that’s no mean feat. But when he comes down to breakfast to find his Mother acting strangely, and his father turns up acting even stranger, he starts to get the feeling something is amiss.

He mulls it over on the ride to Mr. Fogarty’s with his father, and bites the bullet w...moreHenry Atherton thought he was living a pretty normal life. Sure, working for Mr. Fogarty could be strange, as the man was completely paranoid, but all in all things were good. He even made his cardboard pig fly–and that’s no mean feat. But when he comes down to breakfast to find his Mother acting strangely, and his father turns up acting even stranger, he starts to get the feeling something is amiss.

He mulls it over on the ride to Mr. Fogarty’s with his father, and bites the bullet when he gets let off, and asks his father if he’s having an affair. The answer he receives sends him reeling. So, while cleaning out Mr. Fogarty’s shed and realizing the cat has caught a miniature person with winds, and NOT a butterfly as he first suspected, he captures the thing in a jamjar and takes it to Fogarty, sure things can’t get much weirder.

At home later, he starts to think he must have been crazy to believe in faeries, even if he had been just talking to one. But he knows it was real. When he arrives the next day to find Fogarty with a youth about his own age, things get better and odder all at once.

As promised, Pyrgus has returned to his actual size.

Pyrgus and Henry break into Henry’s school to gather components needed to build a portal to enable Pyrgus to get back home, where he’s certain plots against his father are unfolding. After delivering the parts, Henry’s bit is meant to be done. He’s promised never to see Mr. Fogarty again. But after many days of unanswered calls, he can’t take it anymore, and heads to Fogarty’s to make sure everything is all right.

By this time, Pyrgus has disappeared through the portal and no one’s sure where he is, and his father has come through and gone back with Mr. Fogarty in tow. Henry manages to find the clues left behind and open the portal himself to get through.

After arriving at the Purple Palace, things take one unfortunate turn after another. Only though a stroke of imagination does Henry manage to turn things back around.(less)

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Mar 14, 2009

Barbara rated it

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Shelves: ya, fantasy

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Jan 11, 2011

Ithlilian rated it

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Shelves: young-adult

I decided to give Faerie Wars a try after reading Wicked Lovely and Ink Exchange. This book didn't wow me in any way. Faerie Wars starts off with a bang. The son of the emperor of light faeries is on the run after stealing a Phoenix, he stumbles upon a secret, gets captured and escapes a few times, just to be scolded and exiled by his father. Then it goes down hill. We meet the human and hear about his problems while a sister searches for her lost brother. There is some sort of war looming in th...more

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Jun 16, 2010

Eric rated it

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Shelves: advisory-2009-2010

Henry is the main character and the setting is in a modern time period. Henry mom is having an affair with his father's secretary and it's a woman (LESBIAN). Also Henry is working for a paranoid old man called Mr.Fogarty. usually it's the guys who is cheating on the girl a change of what people usually see which i like. Pyrgus also somewhat a main character he's from the other world a different dimension of Henry's. Pyrgus is a prince who is next to be emperor but he doesn't want to be emperor i...more

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Jan 16, 2012

Carey Gibbons rated it

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Predictable, but fun. I'm not usually a fan of humor in my fantasy, but I read this for my book club and enjoyed it enough to go onto the next book in the series. This book is classified as YA, but has some graphic descriptions of animal sacrifice. It also gets overly silly at times and parts of the resolution were stupidly anticlimactic (the demon Belas tripping in his pool of molten lava, undoing decades of preparation). But I liked Henry, Pyrgus, Blue, and Mr. Fogarty and I'm curious to see w...more

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May 01, 2009

Andrea rated it

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While this book was written for young adults....there are some things in this novel that I would not like my tween or even teen reading.
The book begins with Henry finding out his mother is having an affair with his fathers secretary. I found this totally irrelevant other than to leave Henry in a horrible situation. This could have been arranged by many other means.
Further more there is graphic discriptions of demon congering with the use of animal sacrifice. While the "demo...more

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Jul 16, 2010

Melissa Bennett rated it

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This book is about the world of Faerie and our world (called the Analogue world). The people from the Faerie world aren't fairies but just regular people just like us that live a little differently. That is, until they use their portal to come into our world. Then when they pass through they become a fairy (unless you use a filter). And thus starts of the story of Henry - a boy from our world and Pyrgus - a boy from Faerie world. Pyrgus gets stuck in our world and needs the help of Henry and old...more

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Mar 16, 2009

John rated it

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Shelves: fantasy

*** SERIOUS SPOILER ALERT - DON'T READ UNLESS YOU HAVE FINISHED THE BOOK***
Faerie Wars - Somewhere between Artemis Fowl.. Potter.. and ????
Henry, the main character in the book, is the typical teen-with-problems character. Just when the book seems to be a candidate for a daytime family-tell-all show, Henry starts seeing faeries.
Henry is also somewhat of a dolt, who seems to fall into bad to worse situations, only to have his fat pulled out of the fire by the other charact...more*** SERIOUS SPOILER ALERT - DON'T READ UNLESS YOU HAVE FINISHED THE BOOK***
Faerie Wars - Somewhere between Artemis Fowl.. Potter.. and ????
Henry, the main character in the book, is the typical teen-with-problems character. Just when the book seems to be a candidate for a daytime family-tell-all show, Henry starts seeing faeries.
Henry is also somewhat of a dolt, who seems to fall into bad to worse situations, only to have his fat pulled out of the fire by the other characters in the book. I guess this shouldn't put me off - since I compained about Harry Potter for the same reason. Face it, where would Harry be without Dumbledore, Heromine, and Ron... probably dead about 50 times over!
The funny thing is that his counterpart in the Faerie world, Pyrgus the crown prince of faeries, seems to be a mirror inage of Henry. Not quite bright enough to get out of trouble without the intervention of his sister Blue, or Fogarty, or accidentally saved by Henry.
Fogarty is the best character in the whole book, in my opinion.
Kind of a combination of the 'Crankshaft' character from the comics, and Mel Gibson's character in 'Conspiracy Theory'. Fogarty's blend of sarcastic humor, borderline paranoid-scitzophrenia, and technical know how balance the fantasy aspect of the story, somehow without compromizing it. Brennan mixes the 'magic' of the faerie world with the 'magic' (science), of the 'Analouge' world, so that both are vitally important to the success of the heroes and the story.
Brennan introduces a host of enemies, maybe too many at once.
Some are somewhat cartoonish (like Brimstone), but others extremely malevolent, like Beleth the Prince of Demons. I had to laugh (sometimes out loud - which got very strange looks from friends and family) everytime I hear the name 'Lord Hairstreak'. I am hoping that he is described more in future volumes.
One of the curious 'loose ends' in the book is the character of 'Comma', Pyrgus and Blue's brother. Noone in a murder mystery,(other than the butler), could be more guilty than him, and yet Brennan hardly mentions him, and lets him off with little comment when the Gatekeeper is found to be a traitor. One hopes that this little snot will get what is obviously coming to him as he betrayed his father and brother in order to gain the throne of the Purple Emperor.
Over all - I did like the book, and I am currently reading the second book in the series "The Purple Emperor" and hope the story finds a bit more direction.

It is hard to exactly say what it is about this book that made me the most uneasy. Perhaps the fact that within the first 50 pages you find out that the protagonist's mother is a practising lesbian, or maybe it is somewhat too accurate description of Brimstone's conjuring of a demon.
Either way, I kept asking myself why I was uneasy about this book being marketed to teens, (and most likely being read by even younger kids). And then I read a biography of Herbie Brennan.
Brennan is a noted writer in the area of 'Pagan' beliefs and practice (I put 's around pagan not to judge the pagan beliefs themselves, but Brennan's writings, as he espouses a somewhat personal version of the beliefs, rather than the more common strains).
He has obviously decided to highlight his eclectic beliefs in his book with little restraint, (unlike J.K. Rowling who muted the association between magic and pagan culture and belief in the 'Harry Potter' series). OK - this is a personal bias of mine, which is supported by a personal history of curiosity and unguided experimentation in things occultic during my teens. Some of which was harmful to myself and others. Rant over... (less)

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Sep 14, 2011

Taylor rated it

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I love this book. I've borrowed it from the library so many times that I'm going to buy it. It has that dry, sarcastic humor I love, a great adventure, fantasy plot, and interesting characters. It starts out with *SPOILER* Henry finding out that his mom cheated on his dad with a woman, i.e., his mom is a lesbian. The same day, when he goes to his part-time job at Mr. Fogarty's house to clean, he finds a fairy. Pyrgus, the crown prince of his world, was sent to our dimension to be kept safe but h...more

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Dec 01, 2011

Rob rated it

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I hate to give a one star review, and maybe this book and I are just a bad fit, but I was never even able to finish it. I just could not get into it, I kept waiting for that one aspect that would hook me and pull me in and it never came. The characters all came off as too simple and cliche. (The whole book comes off as if it is aimed at a younger crowd than I had thought. It might not be bad for someone's first foray into fantasy.), there was nothing interesting to make me want to keep readin...more

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Aug 21, 2011

Jacob rated it

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Shelves: favorites

Do not let the title fool you, it almost fooled me. Their is no happy singing woodland creatures, no magical dust,and sertanly no tinkerbells in this great novel. The plot is origanl and easily rememberbal. The story is filled to the covers with action, humor, excitment, and plot twists. All the character are beyond fascinating and at the end of each chapter I found my self liking everyone of them more and more ( even the evil ones). Also, the ending was amazing and did not disappoint. This book...more

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Nov 14, 2008

Ryan Mishap rated it

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Shelves: young-adult-fantasy

Henry's parents seem to be heading for a divorce, but it isn't because his dad is having an affair with his secretary--turns out it is his mom who is having the affair with his secretary. From the start you know this isn't going to be a book that follows the expected paths. While Henry deals with this and does some work for a conspiracy minded eldery neighbour, young Prince Prygus is liberating kittens from a factory back in the faerie realm. Eventually, these two characters meet and Henry gets ...more

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Jun 21, 2009

Kristen Leong rated it

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On the back of my copy of Faerie Wars, Eion Colfer (author of the Artemis Fowl series and more) said that he "meant to read this at his leisure" but ended up putting off a whole day's work and meals to finish this book. I started reading this book, thinking, "Well, if Eion Colfer thought it was good, then it must be good" and I totally did not expect to get so sucked into the book.

It's a new type of faerie world and I absolutely loved how I could get so into the ...more

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Feb 22, 2010

Mary rated it

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Shelves: milkshake-books

This book is a milkshake book. That means that it's not groundbreaking, it's not great literature, it's not something that I'm going to brag about reading. But that being said, it is a good milkshake book. The whole series is, in its young adult fantasy way, very good, and I found it enjoyable.

One complaint: I dislike how Herbie Brennan ends every other chapter with a punchline. For example: Pyrgus is trying to sneak out of the castle without Blue finding out. He ducks into secr...more

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Aug 15, 2011

Brianna rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: books-i-bought-discounted

Bought this at the dollar store when I was stranded and needing to kill some time. It was definitely a fun read ... I sped through it in part of a day. It's basically a YA novel, more reminscient of Never Ending Story than Harry Potter.

The characters and worlds created are fun, and I feel like I didn't think of it as a YA novel until the dumbed down ending where (view spoiler)

St...more

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Mar 30, 2011

Flora Bateman rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi, young-adult

Henry is a 14 year old who's just found out his parents are seperated because his mother is having an affair with another woman. During this time Henry is working for elderly Mr. Fogerty in order to save for an ipod when he finds Pyrgus Malvae, a fairy prince, in Mr. Fogerty's garden. This sets Henry on an adventure in our world and theirs. Its a good story, very typical YA sci-fi, and also very predictable. I'm sure there was more going on than what was told however. Am hoping the questions lef...more

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Sep 06, 2009

MarsianMan rated it

· review of another edition

A faerie (Pyrgus) ends up in our world, found by a boy (Henry) who just found out his mother is cheating on his father, with his father's female secretary! Pyrgus needs to get back and only Mr. Fogarty and Henry can help him.
(Mr. Fogerty was a strange character that I enjoyed.)

The story was fun, but nothing amazing. I will look forward to reading the rest of the series. The talk of science / magic in our world bothered me a little; the explanation just sat a little wrong with me ...more

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About Herbie Brennan

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Name: Herbie Brennan

Occupation: Author

Favourite book: The Crimson Petal and the White, by Michel Faber.

Favourite subjects: Esoteric matters, psychical research, anomalies, Mac computers, other people and cats.

Favourite journals: Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, Mac Format.

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The Purple Emperor (The Faerie Wars Chronicles, #2)

Ruler of the Realm (The Faerie Wars Chronicles, #3)

Faerie Lord (The Faerie Wars Chronicles, #4)

The Faeman Quest (The Faerie Wars Chronicles, #5)

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Quotes from Faerie Wars

“Brimstone: '...I shall smite thee with my fightful blasting wand so that thy teeth shall drop out, thy skin shall wrinkle, thou shalt have boils on thy bottom and be subject to night sweats, ringing in the ears, falling sickness, flaking dandruff, arthritis, lumbago, uncontrollable dribbling, deafness, runny nose, and ingrowing toenails. Amen.” — 11 people liked it

“Anybody could have seen you. I was just unlucky.' He realised what he'd said and added hurriedly, 'I mean not unlucky to have seen you that way. I mean you're very pretty, beautiful and all that, no spots or anything...' - Henry” — 5 people liked it

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Faerie Wars (The Faerie Wars Chronicles #1)

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