This book is as much a visual delight as it is a delight to read. The illustrations inside are stunning and the story is as beautiful. The only issue I had was just that I wished it was longer because I didn’t want it to end!

This is the perfect way to spend an evening as it is only 224 pages so it is a fairly quick read, coupled with the fact the writing and the story are so good you will forget about time passing you bye as you are whisked away to a place you will never forget!

Orfeia was published on 3 September 2020 so you can grab yourself a copy straight away and I highly recommend that you do. It is an amazing story accompanied by some amazing drawings. This book will definitely be in my top ten books so far this year!

Sorry for the brief review, I am currently sat in my hospital bed having antibiotics through a drip to cure pleurisy ( )

4.5 stars, triggers: brief mention of suicide

Travel into the Realm of Faerie.
Explore a Mother's grief.

While out running in London, late at night, Fay sees a vision: her daughter lying asleep in a bluebell wood. But Daisy is dead; she killed herself after being haunted by a shadowless man.

Certain that she can reach her, and maybe even bring her back, Fay begins a journey to find her daughter; travelling into the Realm of Faerie, and beyond to the halls of the Halloween King in the land of the dead.

Emotive as is usual from this author, Orfeia is a beautiful novella, written in the old Fairystory style. Focusing on themes of grief, memory, and identity, and sure to gently break your heart along the way. ( )

Promising a story with echoes of Persephone’s underworld, I knew I had to pick up Joanne Harris’ take on this classic myth when I spotted its lusciously designed cover in the thrift shop. Weaving a tale with distinct tones of Old World Europe, she takes us on a journey that begins in modern London, after Fay Orr loses her daughter Daisy and accidentally slips into a sideways world on her quest for solace. Tracing her journey downwards towards an almost inevitable stopping point in Death alongside the Hallowe’en King, Harris plays with dark themes - the madness of memory loss after trauma, the bargains we make to survive, and the suffering that the world inflicts whether we beat the game or not - to create a tale that balances more towards disconcerting than hopeful. Using language that spins as wildly as Fay during her quest, she keeps readers on the edge while still building solidly on the existing mythic canon, with hints of a Gaiman-esque underworld, a Shakespearean band of faeries, and a whimsically Carollian adventure. She isn’t quite as successful as any of her predecessors here, as things go a little too off kilter and the swirl of magic never quite solidifies into something real, but I can see the hints of story that will later be built into the absolute epic that will be Honeycomb. Fay Orr’s journey is one that we hope will end happily ever after, but as she takes her place on the underworld’s throne Harris drives home with an unexpectedly complex conclusion: that this story may have ended in tragedy, but it is only the beginning of the next cycle. ( )