Servant of Earth (The Shards of Magic) by Sarah Hawley (book review).

Another Winter Solstice in the village of Tumbledown, and the unmarried women gather to see who will be sent as tribute across the bog to the Fae lands. Kenna lives poor and hungry at the edge of the bog and does not believe that faerie lights appear to guide those chosen safely through to a life of riches and luxury. The tribute process, to her, is just a way of ridding families of useless’ older girls.

Kenna makes a meager living by trawling for items in the bog.  Perhaps some items originate from the Fae lands, or perhaps the villagers have simply lost them over time. On this solstice, her nets uncover a dagger topped with a wickedly sharp ruby. A fortune. A chance. Kenna has the opportunity to break free from poverty and Tumbledown, and liberate herself and her closest companion from the role of tribute candidates.

Too late, though. Kenna must strike out to save her friend from the bog and the Fae. Earth House takes Kenna as a servant, trapping her in the underground realm of Mistei. She must help her new mistress survive six vicious and deadly trials and achieve immortality or die. Her only assets are the strange ruby dagger that seems to have mystical powers and her determination to get back to the human world.

It’s refreshing to see a female protagonist in this genre navigate a more complex and challenging childhood. Kenna must cope with her father’s abandonment and a generally impoverished and starving upbringing, which leads to significant social ostracism. Consequently, she only has one friend, who is clearly somewhat codependent. Maas’ protagonist in ‘Throne Of Glass’ experiences the murder of her parents, undergoes harsh assassin training, and endures sexual abuse in a salt mine while a slave. Kenna has a background that any male high fantasy character could claim.

What Kenna really needs to overcome once she’s in Faerie, rather than her childhood traumas, is her lack of experience with hair and makeup, because to me, again, we have the ‘feral outsider’ taking a bath and a lick of badly applied makeup and, BAM!, they’re beautiful.

This leads me directly to the two primary concerns I have with this book’s logic. The first issue is that faeries perceive humans as little more advanced than animals, often stifling their tongues to avoid the intrusive chatter we are accustomed to. Why is she not maimed or otherwise altered like the other humans? Earth House orders her solely to serve as a handmaiden during the trials. Yet she’s allowed to speak, make terrible attempts at hair and makeup, and generally wander about. Several important people decide that this totally unique and clueless human makes the perfect spy.

The second is that Earth House tells Kenna to get her mistress through the trials or die. Once more, it takes a significant amount of faith to trust a chance encounter with a stranger. Call yourselves a powerful faerie faction but can’t use some of your immortal time to prepare for an expected event that might kill your heir?

Writer Sarah Hawley does some solid work on building Kenna’s world, drawing bits of faerie myth that I vaguely recognize, such as leaping over bonfires and living under the hills, plus the theft of pretty humans.  The village of Tumbledown and the politics of Mistei, which maintain a local focus, perfectly fit Kenna’s bewilderment and sense of abandonment. Hawley does begin to bring in some wider geopolitical fairy politics, which really just complicates things a little early. Later books will likely expand upon these concepts.

Kenna is not all alone in Mistei. Several powerful gentlemen are interested in more than just her questionable spying skills. One in particular gives her several strangely short but equally strangely explicit sex scenes. This romance lacks the health that classics like ‘Wuthering Heights’ and ‘Twilight’ portray. Kenna is a slave. No relationship with a faerie would be complete without some very strange power dynamics, which are not the best models to model real-world behaviors upon.

I devoured this captivating novel in a few days. I am an adult cynic who enjoyed poking at the power dynamics and strange ‘stealth’ choices. I would not recommend this for the impressionable teen in your life. But if that teen or yourself enjoyed the slightly ludicrous plot romps of ‘Twilight’ or ‘Throne Of Glass,’ you’ll find ‘Servant Of Earth’ a fun read. If you want your protagonist to double down on the adult content during their Fae challenge plotline, try Laurel K. Hamilton’s ‘Meredith Gentry’ series. Overall, the series is fun, but I wouldn’t recommend buying it in hardback until you’ve read the entire series and are ready to become obsessed.

LK Richardson

December 2024

(pub: Ace/Penguin. 464 page hardback. Price: $29.00 (US). ISBN: 978-0-59381-979-1)

check out website: www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/761867/servant-of-earth-by-sarah-hawley/