geri_chan | Books about changelings

I recently finished reading two books dealing with changelings: The Replacement by Brenna Yovanoff, and Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire, whom I blogged about previously on the topic of Mary Sues and Narrative Kinks.

Stories and folktales about changelings tend to be about a parent trying to get back a child who has been replaced by a changeling, but The Replacement is told from the point of view of Mackie, the changeling in question. He knows that he's a changeling because his older sister Emma witnessed her real baby brother being taken from his crib by a strange man, who left Mackie behind as a replacement. Even without Emma's story, it would be obvious that Mackie is something not quite human: he's severely allergic to iron and he can't walk on consecrated ground (it causes his skin to burn and blister), which is a bit problematic since his father is a pastor.

Mackie's parents seem to know that he is a changeling, too. Unlike Emma, they never openly discuss it, but they keep as little iron in the house as possible (they mostly use plastic, ceramic, and aluminum cutlery in the kitchen), and when Mackie's father expanded the church property to build a new Sunday school, he deliberately failed to have the ground consecrated. But most tellingly, Mackie's father has cautioned him to blend in and not attract attention, citing the example of Kellan Caury, who was murdered in 1931 for being too different. He stood out because he had an extra set of joints in his fingers and was allergic to iron, but he was liked well enough until the sheriff's daughter disappeared after several other children had already gone missing. Then the townspeople decided that Caury was responsible and lynched him.

What's interesting is that even though Mackie's family knows that he's a changeling, they love and protect him as if he were their biological son (or brother). Emma in particular is fiercely protective of him, and at one point, even puts her own life at risk in order to help him. Perhaps it's because, as Emma tells him, "You're the only brother I've known."

It soon becomes clear that strange things have been going on in the town of Gentry for a very long time, and that other children were replaced by changelings in the past, although they usually die soon after the exchange--Mackie appears to be a rare exception. And strangely, the townspeople don't seem to question why so many of their children die so young.

Mackie tries hard to follow his father's advice, and would like nothing better to be normal and fit in with the other kids at school, but his iron-related illness is making him sicker and sicker. And the younger sister of his classmate Tate has supposedly died, but although everyone else accepts that explanation, Tate refuses to believe the dead baby is really her sister. Apparently Mackie hasn't done a good enough job of blending in, because she is convinced that Mackie can help find and rescue her sister, and she won't take "no" for an answer.

Although the novel is based on the old fairy tales about changelings, the feel of the book is closer to horror than fantasy, with an increasing air of foreboding, and when we finally meet the faeries, they're mostly a pretty creepy bunch. But it was a very compelling story, and I couldn't stop reading because I wanted to find out what would happen to Mackie and if he could find Tate's sister before it was too late. I loved the characters, and I especially loved the relationship between Mackie and his family: how close he and Emma are in spite of the whole changeling thing, and how he feels a bit awkward and distant with his parents at times (like many normal teenagers), but at the same time, it's clear that his parents care about him and are doing their best to protect him. I love Tate, who's so strong and stubborn, and how Mackie is attracted to her while at the same time he wishes she would just take all her problems and go away and let him go back to pretending that he's normal. And I love Mackie's friend Roswell, who really is the normal guy that Mackie would like to be, but accepts and stands by Mackie in spite of all the weirdness. Oh, and I love that Mackie find solace in playing bass guitar, and how he coats the steel strings with lacquer to keep them from burning his fingers. (I don't know, maybe it appeals to me because I used to play guitar myself.)

Anyway, I won't spoil the story any further, but I'll just say that I found it suspenseful and a little scary, one of those books that you just want to read from start to finish because you can't wait to see what will happen next, and that it had a very satisfying conclusion.

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Toby Daye in Rosemary and Rue is a different type of changeling--actually, it would be more accurate to say that she's a half-blood. Her mother was faerie and her father was human, and the fae refer to such mixed-blood children as "changelings." When a changeling child begins to show signs of faerie magic, they are asked if they want to be human or fae. If they choose "human," they are immediately killed, and if they choose "fae," they are taken away from the human parent and whisked away to the faerie world to be taught how to use their powers, which is what happened to Toby. However, most of the fae look down on changelings and treat them with contempt, so changelings usually find themselves unable to belong fully to either the human or faerie worlds.

Toby becomes a knight to a sympathetic faerie lord, Duke Sylvester, but she also tries to build a normal human life, working as a private investigator in San Francisco. She has a human lover and a young daughter who know nothing of her faerie heritage, and Toby is waiting and hoping that her daughter will not manifest any magical power. It's likely that she has too much human blood to have any magic, but I was surprised that Toby would take the risk of having her child killed or torn away from her human life, given the trauma that Toby herself went through. But it seems to be part of Toby's desire to have a normal human life--not unlike Mackie, come to think of it.

But while on a mission for Sylvester, she is caught by the enemy and turned into a fish, and spends the next fourteen years swiming in a koi pond. When she is finally restored to her true self, she finds that her lover and child have mourned her disappearance and presumed death, and when she suddenly appears alive and well after so many years, they believe that she must have abandoned them and now want nothing to do with her. It doesn't help that she can't--or won't--tell them the truth, offering only flimsy excuses of having been kidnapped and having amnesia. I'm not sure if there's some sort of faerie law about not revealing themselves to humans, which does seem likely, though I don't recall it being explicitly stated in the book. Maybe she thinks they just won't believe her, but she could easily demonstrate some magic to prove it. Or maybe she's just so invested in keeping her human and faerie indentities separate that she can't bring herself to tell them the truth. Or maybe she's afraid that getting them involved with the faerie world will put them in danger. I have to admit that although I really loved the book, that was one plot point that I didn't fully understand. She's so devasted by their loss that I would have thought she would make at least one desperate attempt to convince them of the truth.

Either way, Toby is emotionally broken by the loss of her family, and she cuts herself off from the faerie friends who do care about her. She gets a job as a grocery store clerk, and doesn't do much but go back and forth between work and home, trying hard not to care about or get involved with anyone. However, when her friend Countess Evening Winterrose is murdered, Toby finds herself drawn back into the faerie world to find her friend's killer--in part because she feels guilty about having ignored the phone messages Evening left asking for her help, and in part because Evening doesn't just count on Toby's friendship, but lays a curse on Toby binding her to solve the murder or die herself.

Toby, being half Daoine Sidhe, has an interesting (if rather unpleasant) magical ability that suits her profession as a P.I. very well: by tasting the blood of someone who has died, she can see their memories from the moments just before they died. She's kind of a magical CSI, I guess?

I enjoyed the mystery, but mostly I loved the characters and the worldbuilding: I was fascinated by the various types of fae and their different abilities, and the politics of the faerie world. I loved Toby and sympathized with her loss and how alienated she feels from both worlds, even while I got a bit frustrated with her for pushing away the people who love her and want to help her--which makes her a great three-dimensional character, I suppose! There are a number of supporting characters that I also loved, including Duke Sylvester, but I think the one that I loved the most was Tybalt, the King of the Cait (cat) Sidhe. He's a wonderfully vivid character: like a cat, Tybalt is beautiful, mysterious, independent, and sometimes infuriating (at least to Toby, anyway). He appears antagonistic towards Toby at first, but beneath the surface there seems to be some attraction and affection that is obvious to the reader, though not to Toby.

(I'm not at all surprised that Toby/Tybalt is a popular fanon pairing--in fact, it was one that my Yuletide recipient requested last year, though I was unfamiliar with the Toby Daye books at the time, so I went with the In Death prompt instead. Someone did write her a Toby/Tybalt story as a Treat, so I'll have to go look it up now!)

Anyway, I loved McGuire's take on urban fantasy, and how the fae manage (or don't manage) to coexist in the modern human world. In fact, I just devoured the second book (A Local Habitation), which takes the urban fantasy thing a step further, when Toby is sent to check up on Sylvester's niece January, who runs a company that produces computer fantasy games. The concept of faeries making computer games might sound kind of silly, but the way that January managed to mesh magic with technology was really interesting. There is another mystery to be solved, of course, and we get to see more of Tybalt (yay!) and Quentin, a minor character from the first book who is a teenage Daoine Sidhe from Sylvester's court.

And btw, Seanan has some very cool Toby icons and wallpaper available on her website.

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And since we're on the subject of changelings, I should also give a shout-out to Tithe by Holly Black. It's been several years since I read it, so my memory is a bit fuzzy on some of the details, but it's also a story about a changeling. In this case, sixteen-year-old Kaye discovers that she isn't a human, but a pixie who was substituted for the real Kaye as a baby. When she saves an Unseelie knight named Roiben, he becomes indebted to her, and she gets caught up in a power struggle between the Seelie and Unseelie courts. Roiben turns out to actually be a Seelie knight who was sent to the Unseelie court as part of a peace treaty (if I recall correctly, the Queens each sent their favorite knight to the other's court), and I loved the cutthroat faerie politics and how Roiben is torn between the two courts. (Naturally a potential romance or at least attraction begins to develop between Kaye and Roiben.)

The series continues with Valiant (set in the same universe but with different main characters, although Kaye and Roiben do put in a cameo appearance). Ironside continues the story of Kaye and Roiben, although I can't say too much about it without giving away the ending of Tithe. However, I can say that Kaye reveals her true identity to her mother, and when her mother reacts with shock and horror, she resolves to find the human Kaye in the faerie world and bring her back home. All three books were a great read, and highly recommended if you like fantasy with dark overtones (while at the same time not being completely without hope).