The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door - H.G. Parry - ★★★.¾

AUTHOR: H.G. Parry

GENRE: Historical Fantasy

PUBLICATION DATE: October 22, 2024

RATING: 3.75 stars.

In a Nutshell: A character-driven historical fantasy combining vibes of dark academia and faerie magic. Interesting plot, complex characters, well-handled themes. Plenty of magic but need to wait a long while for it. Might seem like YA because of the characters’ ages, but the content and the plot work for adults too. Loses a little bit of steam at times, but overall, a great option for lovers of this genre.

Plot Preview:

1920. “Camford”, UK. Seventeen-year-old Clover is a commoner with no wealth or connections or even magical blood. So as a student at the Camford University of Magical Scholarship, where almost every student comes from rich families with magic in their blood, Clover knows that she must strive her best and learn enough magic to find a cure for her elder brother Matthew, one of the handful of survivors of a faerie attack on the battlefield during the Great War. But as the study of faerie magic has been banned after that incident, Clover’s options are limited.

Clover finds her tribe with Alden – a spoilt rich boy with similar research interests as Clover, and his two friends – Hero (the only other female student at Camford) and Eddie (who loves plants more than anything.) With this trio, Clover learns more about friendship and heartbreak, and yes, even faerie doors. However, as often happens during dangerous pursuits, this friendship too is threatened by an unforeseen event, which creates repercussions even years later.

The story comes to us in Clover’s first-person perspective, written as a flashback from some point in the future.

Bookish Yays:

🍀 Clover: A bit bristly at the start and also naïve almost throughout the 1920 timeline. But also ambitious and determined. Unlike typical “poor outsider” protagonists, she is not afraid to bend the rules. She’s a flawed character, which makes the story a lot more interesting to read in her voice.

🍀 Hero and Eddie, two of Clover’s friends, are excellent secondary characters. Though Eddie gets a relatively muted role, both Hero and he make their presence felt. I liked their individual personalities. Other great characters were Clover’s brother Matthew (I’d love to read a spinoff telling Matthew’s story), and Clover’s mentor Lady Anjali Winter (Indian immigrant, excellently written.)

🍀 Thanks to the main friends’ group being in their late teens, the book might feel a bit YA at times. However, it doesn’t have the most common YA pitfall: a whiny protagonist with loads of inner rambling. All the characters sound and act their age without going too stereotypically teen.

🍀 The story is written as a flashback journal narrative from much in the future, and the author maintains this tone throughout. The writing is interspersed with observations, elucidations and emotions from the older Clover looking back on the past events – a great writing choice.

🍀 Love the setting of alternate England, where the Great War did occur, but also had fae interference. The historical portrayal felt fairly authentic.

🍀 The themes of wealth/class discrimination, gender discrimination, knowledge restriction, anticolonialism, and most of all, the selfishness of humans.

🍀 The magic and the faerie content, though not frequent throughout the book, is still fun to read.

🍀 The writing is truly beautiful, with lyrical descriptions and lovely metaphors.

Bookish Mixed Bags:

🌳 The world-building gave mixed vibes. While a few settings were well-described, the rest of the book felt standard. Some parts reminded me strongly of Babel and Harry Potter, though in a good way.

🌳 The concept of “Camford University”, set up as the third reputed university along with Oxford and Cambridge. (There’s a good reason its name is an amalgamation of the other two.) However, though the book could be called ‘dark academia’ to some extent, the use of Camford is more as a location than as an institution of learning. The professor who’s supposed to be Clover’s mentor is forgotten soon after he is introduced. We hardly get to see any magical classes or teachers or training. The only dominant Camford location is the library. I wish there had been a bit more focus on the training part also to make the location feel essential to the plot.

🌳 While I did love the journal-style storytelling, this also means that there is a lot of foreshadowing. Most of it is fine, but sometimes, the foreshadowing feels too blatant.

🌳 Though the title promises us the ‘scholar’ and the ‘last faerie door’, the story has way more ‘scholar’ than ‘faerie door’. You need a lot of patience at the start because the book takes a long time to get to the faerie parts. Of course, once these come, they are worth the wait.

🌳 The narrative jumps a decade after a point. It takes time to get used to the sudden change in character circumstances. This section is darker than the earlier ones, but has many more twists and surprises.

Bookish Nays:

🍂 Too much secret keeping, mainly but not only by one character. It feels annoyingly repetitive after a point.

🍂 The overall pacing is quite slow, but some parts of the book drag too much, especially in the initial section before *that* summer, and the final face-off, even though it has a lot happening.

🍂 I wasn’t a fan of some of the events towards the end – they felt much over the top and left some unanswered questions.

All in all, while the book could have done better in its pacing and worldbuilding, the story was still interesting enough. The characters worked the best for me, though I see how readers who prefer likeable protagonists might have an issue with Clover.

This is my second H.G. Parry book, after ‘The Magician’s Daughter’, another standalone historical fantasy. Both books have good characters and are somewhat YA in tone. However, ‘The Magician’s Daughter’ has better magical elements, while ‘The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door’ fares better in terms of plot complexity. I liked both the books, and would love to read more by this author.

Definitely recommended to those who enjoy character-driven historical fantasy. Technically, this is an adult fantasy, but considering the ages of the characters it could easily work for older YA Fantasy readers as well.

3.75 stars. (1920 timeline – 4 stars, second timeline – 3.5 stars.)

My thanks to Little, Brown Book Group UK and Orbit for providing the DRC of “The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door” via NetGalley. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.