The toymaker who wants to create the perfect wife; the princess whose heart is won by words, not actions; the tiny dog whose confidence far outweighs his size; and the sinister Lacewing King who rules over the Silken Folk. These are just a few of the weird and wonderful creatures who populate Joanne Harris’s first collection of fairy tales.
To define Honeycomb by Joanne M. Harris as a bare bones summary of its plot would be to say that it chronicles the life and reign of the Lacewing King, the ruler of the Silken Folk, a heavily insect-inspired race of fairies. But that is a paltry description. The novel is difficult to properly describe the way a poem is difficult to describe. Like any person’s, the life of the Lacewing King weaves throughout the lives of a cast that feels truly sprawling as the action spreads across the Nine Worlds. The resulting tapestry is then richly embroidered with lyrical prose.
Harris captures the feeling of sitting down with a book of fairy tales and then stepping through that book into an entire world. Tiny stories of only a couple of pages are placed throughout the larger plot. Some will seed characters that will be of some importance to the Lacewing King. Some will be important to people who will be important to him. Some will primarily serve to build on the themes of the book, highlighting the folly of certain mindsets.
That fairy tale sense is further enhanced by the delicate illustrations of Charles Vess, one of my personal favorite artists. His superb line work makes black and white illustrations feel richly alive, and then the book threatens to go overboard by including several full-color plates.
The episodic, short story structure makes Honeycomb easy to pick up and put down if you can only read in short bursts, as much as the beautiful language made me want to linger. I highly recommend it to fans of writers like Susanna Clarke, Charles de Lint, and Neil Gaiman.
Availability: Book Rating: ***** Stars (I loved it) Reviewer: Catherine, Cataloging Librarian
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GENRE: Fairy Tale & Folklore-Inspired Fiction; Fantasy Fiction; Short Stories
TONE: Atmospheric
WRITING STYLE: Descriptive; Lyrical
ILLUSTRATION: Delicate
SUBJECT: Fairies; Magic; Monsters
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