I’ve been reading fantasy novels lately, as evidenced by last month’s pillow talk about War for the Oaks and this month’s The Good Fairies of New York (isbn: 978-1-933368-36-8). But neither of these novels are your average fantasy novel.

So what – you may ask – is the average fantasy novel? You know what I mean! Descended in a direct line from Tolkien, perhaps with a talking tree motif borrowed from C.S. Lewis, the average fantasy novel features friendly animals, perhaps dragons (thank you, Anne McCaffery), ogres, and fairies of some size (willowy and green, or small and mischievous). The main story involves a plucky young man or woman who wanders around for a while, sometimes saving the world, and sometimes just making his or her way through a magical academy (thank you, J.K. Rowling).

The Good Fairies of New York is a different sort of novel: weird, wild and rather unsettling. For one thing, there’s no plucky human heroine, able to use her fifth sense to bond with a nice dragon, or her sword-skill to fight off fourteen nasty dragons. This is really about fairies – in New York. It starts with Morag and Heather, two 18 inch fairies. Not the cute type, though. No. Morag and Heather are Ramones-wanna-bes, with dyed hair and kilts and loud guitar solos.

They do meet humans, sure. But not a peppy youngster, ready to battle for good and against evil; instead Heather befriends Dinnie, a weird, overweight, aggressive New Yorker. And Morag befriends a fading flower child, Kerry, who is seriously ill with Crohn’s Disease. The plot mostly circles around a triple-headed Welsh poppy – but the pleasure here isn’t in the plot, but in the wild imaginative craziness. There are armies marching over the moonbeams, the Festival of Hungry Ghosts (yes, real ghosts), and more fairies. There’s a bit of a love story, and a lesson about good-will among fairies. I suppose if this novel has a genre it would be urban fantasy, because like War for the Oaks, which was rooted in Minneapolis, The Good Fairies of New York is rooted just where you would expect.

Neil Gaimon wrote the introduction to this book and I think it was very telling that his introduction is all about his own jealousy and angst. As Gaimon says, “Read it now, and then make your friends buy their own copies. You’ll thank me one day.”