Alex and his little sister Alice live in a condemned East
Village apartment, supposedly with their mother - but today
she's gone. All that's left are her dreamlike fantasy
canvases; woodland scenes with trolls and wolves. Alex
counts up the food stamps, having been the responsible one
around here for ages. They'll have enough for the week,
with school lunches. He ignores the fairy sitting on his
shoulder. He's been doing that for a long time too.
HAFFLING has us questioning whether Alex's mother really
has schizophrenia or is painting something she alone can
see. As the young people go to school, Alice only has to
smile at someone for them to want to help her. Alex, well,
guys want to beat him up for no reason. He's gay but has
never dared to let anyone know. He's taking martial arts
classes, and says as much to a better-off lad who starts
making conversation. Jerod seems interested, but maybe he's
just being polite. Then Alex skips school to find his
mother for a welfare hearing. The trail leads to a park,
and although his hallucinated fairy tells him to leave, he
persists until he falls through a hole to... somewhere
else.
The dreamlike fairyland is jumbled and not easy to get
into, unlike the early part of the story. Alex's mother is
there, behaving differently and there's an ogre, fairies
and a domineering fairy woman who crushes cupcakes and
plays games with people. Alex manages to drag his mother
out but he knows their troubles with the Sidhe folk are
only beginning. The fairy queen May tracks them down, and
demands his mother come back with her. With no parent, the
kids will be sent to children's homes.... May finds the
easiest course of action is to make a changeling, a
doppelganger of Alex's mother. But Jerod who was becoming
a friend, sees this happen, and he freaks out....
HAFFLING is darker than it first appears, with dangerous,
evil games afoot and queen May prepared to do almost
anything to repopulate the diminishing stock of Sidhe folk.
The fairyland version of New York has similarities to
overland but there is usually something chilling in sight.
Readers who enjoy young adult urban fantasy will have a
ball with this action story and ride a pooka horse along
with the adventurers. Caleb James has combined a lot of
imagery into quite a scary full-length story.
All sixteen-year-old Alex Nevus wants is to be two years older and become his sister Alice's legal guardian. That, and he'd like his first kiss, preferably with Jerod Haynes, the straight boy with the beautiful girlfriend and the perfect life. Sadly, wanting something and getting it are very different. Strapped with a mentally ill mother, Alex fears for his own sanity. Having a fairy on his shoulder only he can see doesn't help, and his mom's schizophrenia places him and Alice in constant jeopardy of being carted back into foster care. When Alex's mother goes missing, everything falls apart. Frantic, he tracks her to a remote corner of Manhattan and is transported to another dimension-the land of the Unsee, the realm of the Fey. There he finds his mother held captive by the power-mad Queen May and learns he is half-human and half-fey-a Haffling. As Alex's human world is being destroyed, the Unsee is being devoured by a ravenous mist. Fey is vanishing, and May needs to cross into the human world. She needs something only Alex can provide, and she will stop at nothing to possess it... to possess him.
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