Publishers Weekly: Underdogs abound in this scrappy, series-launching historical fantasy from Carrick (the Rook and Rose trilogy), the pseudonym for Marie Brennan and Alyc Helms. The authors pit a displaced human and the faerie changeling left in her stead against a Spanish colonial empire bent on conquering both the New World and the faerie realm of the Sea Beyond. The human protagonist, called the Hungry Girl for her need to eat regularly, unlike her fae captors, was sent to the faeries for protection from an uncaring father and now serves as a jester for a capricious faerie queen in exile. Then the Spanish conquistadors arrive, using their religion to break the magic of the Sea Beyond and claim its treasures. The fae protagonist, Estevan, left in Hungry Girl’s place and raised in the human world, seeks to stop this invasion by uncovering the source of the conquistadors’ power. Because time is out of joint between the two realms, the dual narrative becomes slippery and occasionally hard to grasp. Bridging the story lines is Diego, a mortalizado, or faerie enslaved by humans whose immortality has been removed by baptism, whose appearance as old or young helps keep the timeline straight. Carrick makes both the mundane world and the danger-filled fantasy realm of the Sea Beyond vivid. There’s a warmhearted center to this sweeping, mirrored fantasy that’s sure to draw readers in.
May 142026