“She took one last look at the castle that had been her home for her entire life, memorizing the glint of the sun on the Towers. The image went into a box, which she shut and locked, with a key made of the future.”

Talia: Heir to the Fairy Realm by Joel Flanagan-Grannemann is an ambitious and expansive novel about fairies and their friendships. It’s also about worker exploitation, the exploitation and abuse of women, war crimes, and betrayal. It’s a tall order that I’m not sure quite works in the end, but what I liked most about the book is that it swung for the fences.

A couple of things to get out of the way first: Talia is a book about fairies in the sense that A Midsummer’s Dream is about fairies—not exactly like the fae of romantasy, but, say, maybe cousins. Though at first Talia seems like it will be fairly cozy, it is definitely not. By the 50% mark, we begin to explore grimdark territory and the story takes a darker turn.

Talia is the Heir to the throne of the matriarchal Fairy Realm, which has recently been at war with the patriarchal Human Realm. Though a fragile peace reigns, there is still a

lot of lingering hate and prejudice smoldering on both sides. The children of fairy/ human pairings are particularly shunned, as are “wingless” fairies, who have been removed of their wings as punishment for their crimes. As the novel opens, Talia, the Fairy Heir, is hosting Prince Bastile, Heir to the Human Realm, at the Fairy court. Bastille has traveled from his father’s Kingdom to become a spinner of fairy silk and runs a shop in town. However, he remains the Human Heir, and though most of the beginning of the book is taken up by Fairy ceremonies, there are definite hints of brewing conflict under the surface.

I originally thought that Talia and Bastile were in the process of trying to make a political marriage to unite the Realms, but as it turns out that is not exactly the case. Talia has apparently become infatuated with Bastile, but in this climate of court intrigue, in which members of both courts are trying to maneuver the couple to the advantage of their own Realm and the detriment of the other, Talia ends up making some questionable decisions, things end badly, and Talia is sent into exile, where she is basically forced to Grow Up.

Talia had so many elements I was predisposed to like. Court intrigue–check. The promise of romance-check. Deep conflict not easily resolved–check. A gender-flipped Round Table, with noble ladies paired with lady knights (which sometimes begins to feel like a slumber party, but then Arthur’s knights do often remind me of frat bros)-also check.

But somehow, the elements never quite came together for me in a way I thought really did them justice. The prose itself was quite nice, and I highlighted some excellent lines. But at the craft level, I felt like the supports weren’t strong enough to hold up such an expansive story.

I noticed this most in the relationship between Talia and Bastile, and particularly in Bastile’s character. Believable romantic relationships can be tricky, and I think that the time spent portraying the “normal” situation in the beginning might have worked better if we’d been less focused on mundane details and more on specifically building Talia and Bastile’s tension. It’s hard to put my finger on exactly what felt off to me, but I was taken by surprise when Talia declared her love for Bastile. I felt like that depth of feeling had come on quite suddenly and hadn’t been earned on the page. Bastile’s fluctuating character also baffled me a bit, not because I felt that his inner conflict wasn’t realistic, but because it didn’t seem to be developed, making his motives and actions confusing. In fact, both character development and action often tend to come out of nowhere, without the connective tissue to make it feel like they’ve grown organically from the story.

This tendency improves as the book goes on, but it never entirely goes away. I got used to the shifts in tone after a while, but many emotional plot points made me wonder if I had missed something or else they swept a huge area of conflict under the rug very quickly. (I’m looking at you, Queen Talia’s Mom.) And though the Human/Fairy Realm/Talia/Bastile drama was what kept me reading, it tended to disappear for long periods of time. Very few loose threads are wrapped up by the cliffhanger ending, and while that wasn’t entirely dissatisfying–there is quite a bit of character growth for many of the characters along the way–it wasn’t entirely satisfying either.

And that was kind of where I ended up with this book–feeling like the complex relationships, character development, political intrigue, and juicy personal stakes were all there, they just weren’t quite built out sturdily enough.

YMMV on this one, though, particularly if you’re a reader who doesn’t mind filling in a lot of blanks and you like to read stories with dark themes that mostly resolve in cozy details.