Entering the EU Gwald: Sisterhood, Survival and Magic in Habren Faire’s Evil Lies
My heartfelt thanks to the Electric Monkey Book for giving me the arc of “The Evil Lies of Habren Faire” through Netgalley in exchange for my honest comments. It feels not like receiving a book, but rather being given a secret, rain suppressing the key to the gate, the secret, the gate with lower rainfall towards the shadowy forest, the silver-lined sky and the story in the story continues to the last page.
unuthith ar y tro (Once upon a time)
There are stories that don’t just invite you to join. They call you, like the distant echo of the harp on the harp, the wind whispers in the way Gorse and Heather. “Habren’s Fair Evil Lie” is such a story. It’s a dark, glittering Welsh romanticism that slides like the shadow of a semi-forgotten lullaby under your skin the myth of Hiraeth and Cymru.
From the first page, “The Evil Lie Habren Faire” completely fascinated me, and Anna Fiteni’s words weave a creepy otherworldly atmosphere that seems to curl like the mist on my shoulders. Every line is full of magic, but it is by no means a safe magic. That glittering danger is under the ground, daring you to go further. As I read, I felt familiar with the chest, Hiraeth, the desire to long for loved ones who have longed forever, and the world hidden in our hills and streams. The book is filled with the same in-depth Welsh folklore with whimsical, wild, and sometimes frightening beings whose old beliefs are mine, such as Mari Lwyd, The Cyhyraeth, Cyhyraeth, Ceffyl DŵR and PWCA. However, in danger, there are beautiful, warm and fierce heartbeats, reminding people that even the darkest stories can keep light.
Fiteni’s debut is located in a mining village of the 1800s, and Wales’ perseverance and poetry are soaked in: coal dust pasted on your skin, church bells, land and language of the stubborn survival of the man (Iaith y Nefoedd, “The Language of Heaven”) has been stolen and suppressed, but endured. Sabrina Parry is our prickly and imperfect heroine who has learned to survive with sharp words and clearer wisdom. Her sister Ceridwen, gentle, romantic, too soft to the world, disappeared into the nearby woods Gwyll (Twilight), leaving behind an iron ring. To save her, Sabrina must cross the EU Eu Gwald, a dangerous area for Tylwyth Teg. Here, Fiteni gives us a fairy tale that should be: beautiful and rotten, intoxicated and dangerous. This is not a soft modern law. These are the liars of old stories, the kind I, Tad-Cu, whispered before bed. Those things you will throw milk out…Pray never to meet. In Habren Faire, moonlight covers teeth, and bargains are binding in ways that cannot be completely escaped.
I cried, real, unabashed tears, because this world and these characters had a barrier to me that made you think about them long after closing the book. Sabrina Parry entered my heart with all the grace of defeating the storm of the coast. She is everything you would expect from the fantasy heroine, but in some way, more: disgusting, merciless honesty in her lies, a troubled person cheating, thrilling and pleasantly subverting life when it suits her. Her neat looking trail fate caught her eyes on her square and might dare to suggest she follow it first. Still, she is loving, deep loyalty, the kind of person who will knock you out or cut off your fingers if that means protecting the people she cares about. Fiteni writes her with the March sisters from the little woman and her family – her da, her sister Ceridwen, her fanatical sisters with the same rough, beating hearts, her kindness feels as if they have stepped straight out of the literary classics and entered this wild world of Fae. There is also Alice Wonderland madness, all filled with Tim Burton-like shadows that make it both disturbing and totally irresistible.
Neirin Oh, Neirin, the annoying magnetic Fae Prince, his pursuit of breaking into Sabrina and my mind went far beyond what I admit. Like David Bowie’s Jareth, he cuts from the same piece of stardust and golden cloth, all the vanity and silver tongue charm, both dazzling and stupid. His name is almost too high for such delicious self-absorbing, so tempting, so obsessed with humans, yet dangerously unpredictable. His brown eyes grabbed the light, and his eyelashes were like spider legs on his cheeks, in a somewhat smooth way. His wavy black hair was decorated with silver and glittering, as if someone had been dipped in the moonlight, and he was wearing black velvet embroidered with signs, stars, moon and planets, sewn on silver threads, just as he was wearing the night sky. Fiteni injected him with a kind of edgy reminding me of the hockey in a Midsummer Night’s dream. Indeed, there is a blend of Shakespeare’s mischief, beauty and lurking danger throughout the Elliron Court. Neilin is both a lovely gangster and a playful liar, and the slow burn tension between him and Sabrina is a quiet line, braided on a larger tapestry, more intoxicating to create its constraints. As betrayal twists in the dark, their dramas go from thrill to more dangerous things, and I find that they jump every time they share the page.
The LGBTQ+ in Habren Faire’s evil lies represents a structure that is seamlessly woven into the story, like the silver thread in Neirin’s velvet coat, natural, unwritten, and more beautiful. Fiteni doesn’t see homosexuality as a spectacle or side note; it’s simply here, living without shame, like any world worth escaping. In Tylwyth Teg and all its tricky genres, Selkies glide around the ocean and shore, Mermaids, Morgens, their songs curl around love, longing for more than one heart. In a story deeply rooted in Welsh folklore and history, it feels like a quiet, provocative act of reclamation, reminding us that our stories (like our people) are always more diverse, more complex, more complex than narrow road history trying to limit them to.
Thematically speaking, Fiteni captures things I rarely see in my fantasy: bittersweet growth, leaving home, returning to discover its changes, and knowing that you have changed, too. She fell into sorrow with quiet grace: the sorrow of the dead, for the self we leave behind, and also for the loss of story and tradition under the weight of colonization. As a Wales reader, I feel my heart tightly grasping the way she respects the mining community, their sacrifices, stolen labor, their resilience and the way she refuses to polish the edges of Welsh identity.
To me, “The Evil Lie of Habren Faire”, like a love letter to Wales, celebrates everything that makes my homeland. Romantic novels are often borrowed from Welsh myths and landscapes without admitting, let alone interrogating their roots of inspiration. But Fiteni pays tribute to Wales. She cherishes it, respects it, and exhales her life into its heart. Give us, the readers, the rain is relentlessly, the smooth slate roofs, the forest that seems to last forever until they overflow into the fog, and the ancient stone castle rises from the hills like something in a dream. It’s Wales, both real and mythical, the gravel of coal is next to the glimmer of the Wonderland lights, and every page feels painful and longs for home.
In these pages, there are deep, untranslated places, a time, a feeling that can never be completely recaptured. But, there is hope. Hope is in the fierce and messy love between sisters. Hopefully, even if the bargain with FAE can survive, even if it doesn’t win. Hope the story itself survives. Fiteni’s prose is lush and unexaggerated and full of the rhythm of fireside folk tales. She balanced her whimsical, dangerous, gentle and sharp teeth. The ending is because it must be bittersweet, leaving you breathless, a little bruised, and painfully walking through the shadow woods of EU Gwald.
There are books that you want to finish and remember their plot, and then some books will give you words that will root yourself in your bones. “The Evil Lie of Habren Faire” gives me more than one such line, the kind you carry like amulets. “Even if you’re as old as me, if you’re unhappy, you won’t end,” quiet, provocatively reminds people that life is not a diameter leading to a certain fixed point, and that joy is worth chasing until the last breath, no matter how old you are. “People love us for our efforts”, talked about the bone marrow of my existence. We are not only for success, but for trying, working hard, and reaching limits beyond ours. Fiteni’s reflection is: “Our life is small… At the beginning of the first and only day, the dust spots of old coats or Mayfly are humble and uplifting, which is both humble and uplifting, a reminder that even the smallest existence can become someone’s universe. The idea of “we are all used by big houses somewhere” is a painful truth, dressed in whimsical, suggesting that invisible power, whether political, economic or barbaric, can shape our lives without consent. Beneath all this, the warning is: “All the best lies come from the seeds of truth.” “It’s a discernmental lesson because they know that real feelings may only be bait, and that when you have something less, what you have, love, trust and belong to material things. These quotes shape not only my reading experience;
To me, “The Evil Lies of Habren Faire” is like finding the way to the world I dreamed of as a kid, listening to my grandpa talking about the world of Tylwyth Teg I thought I had grown up, but they just sleep. This book awakened them and gave me my sight, and I am grateful for it.
“Evil Lies” will enter the mortal world on August 28, 2025, and I wholeheartedly suggest that it sweeps you out of it at the moment. It’s a story of rain and stars, Hyris and heartbreak, cruel goat milk deals and that kind of love, fierce, messy, unwavering love, can surpass even the oldest magic. It’s a story to lose yourself and carry it with you, like the secret charm of hiding in your pocket after leaving the woods behind for a long time.
A fascinating debut – dark, like slate, bright like stars, filled with the sea.
