Feyland by Anthea Sharp

Feyland: The Dark Realm
Anthea Sharp
Source: eARC from the author

As the daughter of a gaming executive, Jennet is used to trying beta versions of games. So when she finds the new fully simulated Feyland on her dad's computer, she tries it out and finds far more than she bargained for. Now she has to find a champion to regain her lost essence before it's too late. When she meets Tam at her new school, she thinks she might have an answer, but Tam has his own problems to deal with...

Feyland is based on "The Ballad of Tam Lin," which sounded vaguely famliar to me but I had never actually heard. It was a really cool mix of scifi and fairy tale, which sounds like a weird combination but actually worked and was explained really well.

Jennet and Tam's relationship had a definite princess-and-the-pauper feel to it, which is part of the reason this story had a lot of the qualities of a fairy tale. I thought Tam and Jennet each had well-written family issues, though Tam's were wrapped up a little too neatly to be entirely believable. I liked how their relationship unfolded gradually rather than having them fall in love after five seconds in the same room; it was a nice change from the current trend in YA.

As I said, the fairyland-as-a-video-game world was surprisingly successful. A lot of the concepts events will sound familiar to both gamers and people who have to listen to gamers talk about their games all the time, while at the same time hearkening to old fairy stories. I had never before considered how much fairy tales and RPGs had in common, but it's actually a lot!

I really thought this was a very good story overall, and I definitely recommend you check it out!

Quality: Excellent
Enjoyability: Excellent

*You can get Feyland for 99 cents through the weekend for Nook and Kindle.