My previous exposure to Alex Bledsoe had been through several of his Eddie LaCrosse books, which I enjoyed as good pulpy fun. I had heard of his Tufa series, though, and it sounded intriguing, so when the second book in the series popped up at our annual library sale, I snapped it up. This week, when I had one of those evenings where I was working but most of my time could be spent sitting and reading, I took this and another book with me. The other book, Seanan McGuire's Chaos Choreography, I ended up loaning to another person working the event, and she loved it, but I did not get to read it.
That meant I finished what I had left of Wisp of A Thing fairly quickly, and not wanting to take back a book I had just loaned out, started again at the beginning, and almost read it all the way through again by the time the evening was over. So I'm reviewing this after one and four-fifths of a read.
Luckily, the book was good enough that I didn't mind reading it again, although the second time around revealed something that I found confusing. I might not have noticed it had I only read the book the once.
However, in general, the verdict is that I very much enjoyed this fairy-folklore-in-Appalachia modern fantasy, and am looking forward to further books in the series, as well as going back and reading the first book, which was not to be found at said library sale.
The Tufa are people who were there before any settlers came, in the mountains of Appalachia, and have remained there, in small communities, ever since. That's about all people seem to know about them, but the name immediately suggested the Tuatha de Danaan to me, so, knowing this was modern fantasy, I sort of assumed fairies right off the bat.
The main character, a young man named Rob, comes to Tufa territory looking for a song that can mend a broken heart. He lost his girlfriend while he was participating in an American Idol-style show. She was killed in an airplane crash while flying out to meet him. Backstage after he gave his final, contractually-obligated, performance, a man told him of this song, and where to find it, and so he has come.
There, he finds a couple of small settlements with two distinct factions, at least one of them pretty damn nasty - backwoods, insular, and possibly magic-powered. The other, led by the first-born daughters of the various Tufa families, seems more benign. They are led at the moment by a regent, Bliss, who is also a paramedic. The lives of the fairies are not particularly glamorous, although there might be glamours going on all the time.
Rob is attacked by the husky granddaughter of one of the nastier Tufa, giving him a knock on the head, and bringing him further into Bliss' circle. He's also targeted, sort of, by Curnen, Bliss' sister, who lives feral and unable to speak, under a curse that will wither her to nothing by the time the leaves on a particular tree fall. She is fighting to survive without being able to express it.
I'm not going to go into the story much more than that, but it's rich and enjoyable. I was a little confused by the handwavium about how the Tufa came to North America. It's said several times that they were there before any white settlers were, but then the painting that shows them (or at least one of them) in the act that led to their banishment from England was painted in the Victorian era, and there is corroborating evidence for this. So...when did they come over? We get some vague phrases about "time passing differently for the Fae," which I can accept in broad strokes, but are we talking time passes more slowly, or that they can be banished in the Victorian era and turn up centuries earlier? It feels like there's a line or two here that could explain it that I didn't see on either pass.
Likewise, while I get the broad strokes of what Rob ends up doing, and why one branch of the Tufa wants to stop it, I'm a little less clear on the opposition from the other side. I mostly get it, but then, when it does happen, I'm also a little unclear on what exactly was done. Again, I get the broad strokes, but I could use just a smidge more clarity on the specifics.
None of this is enough to spoil the book for me. Even if I felt like there were a few moments where threads were woven together in ways that were muddy to the reader, on the whole, I very much enjoyed this entry into modern fantasy. (Is that the right term? Urban fantasy it isn't , because this is very rural. It's just taking place now, more or less. Contemporary fantasy? Do we have a good term for this yet?)
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