I must be on a Fae kick or something because I started Midsummer Night’s Dream in the same week as Shadowfell, which comes out September 11th, 2012 for any interested parties. Maybe it had something to do with the current political situation and the over saturation of dystopian fiction, but I really liked this book.

Sixteen-year-old Neryn is alone in the land of Alban, where the oppressive king has ordered anyone with magical strengths captured and brought before him. Eager to hide her own canny skill–a uniquely powerful ability to communicate with the fairy-like Good Folk–Neryn sets out for the legendary Shadowfell, a home and training ground for a secret rebel group determined to overthrow the evil King Keldec.

During her dangerous journey, she receives aid from the Good Folk, who tell her she must pass a series of tests in order to recognize her full potential. She also finds help from a handsome young man, Flint, who rescues her from certain death–but whose motives in doing so remain unclear. Neryn struggles to trust her only allies. They both hint that she alone may be the key to Alban’s release from Keldec’s rule. Homeless, unsure of who to trust, and trapped in an empire determined to crush her, Neryn must make it to Shadowfell not only to save herself, but to save Alban.

That’s the gist. I’ll try to spare you spoilers, but here’s a list of awesomeness in this novel:

1. Gaelic. Mariller must have fallen out of a George MacDonald storybook because her world’s language drips of the Gaels. Not to mention the tinkering with Albion/Alban mythology. Not to mention her retention of the culture of the Gaels. Like Chesterton said: The old great Gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad for all their wars are merry and all their songs are sad.
2. Fae. The fairies aren’t lame. In fact, other than MacDonald, Tolkien, Shakespeare and Spencer, I was pretty sure Rothfuss was the only person whose fairy scenes I read and didn’t think, “What a bunch of pathetic excuses for Fae-born.” I enjoyed what Mariller did with the concept of Fae, constantly changing and tweaking them based on region and climate.
3. The magic system. Though she may not have made it as meticulous as Sympathy, as terrifying as the Lord of Light nor as learnable as Rowling’s Latin incantations, Mariller shows the earthen side of magic. She did some things that tap into the old magic of stories, the sorts of things her British forefathers might have done. She also set up an interesting system for future books.

Here’s the thing, the stuff I didn’t like in this book is negligible compared to the serious entertainment value I extracted from the first scene onward. However, I shoot straight with you guys, so here’s my rub: repetition. There were several times where she kept reminding me why something was important, how it mattered, what was at stake. I’m literate like anyone else who reads the book.  I’m not looking for an oral manuscript but a literary one. I don’t need repetition to know what’s at stake. If your scene’s laggin’, then throw somethin’ else into the pot, don’t tell me what you’ve been a’brewin’.

Other than that, I’d give this probably a 3.9/5 — rounded up to 4 on Goodreads. If you’re someone who’d enjoy a girl antagonist in a sword-and-sorcery fantasy world who tell their stories from first-person perspectives and tinker with the subtleties of romance, then preorder this sucker.

(Or if you just have a fetish for the old great Gaels).