A Feather So Black

• Author: Lyra Selene
• Genre: Fantasy Romance
• Publication Date: March 12, 2024
• Publisher: Orbit
• Series: Fair Folk #1

Thank you to Orbit and Angela Man for sending me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Set in a world of perilous magic and moonlit forests, this seductive romantic fantasy tells the story of a defiant changeling, her cursed sister, and the dangerous fae lord she must defeat to save her family.

In a kingdom where magic has been lost, Fia is a rare changeling, left behind by the wicked Fair Folk when they stole the High Queen’s daughter and retreated behind the locked gates of Tír na nÓg.

Most despise Fia’s fae blood. But the queen raises her as a daughter and trains her to be a spy. Meanwhile, the real princess Eala is bound to Tír na nÓg, cursed to become a swan by day and only returning to her true form at night.

When a hidden gate to the realm is discovered, Fia is tasked by the queen to retrieve the princess and break her curse. But she doesn’t go with her is prince Rogan, Fia’s dearest childhood friend—and Eala’s betrothed.

As they journey through the forests of the Folk, where magic winds through the roots of the trees and beauty can be a deadly illusion, Fia’s mission is complicated by her feelings for the prince…and her unexpected attraction to the dark-hearted fae lord holding Eala captive. Irian might be more monster than man, but he seems to understand Fia in a way no one ever has.

Soon, Fia begins to question the truth of her mission. But time is running out to break her sister’s curse. And unraveling the secrets of the past might destroy everything she has come to love.

This book is a story of Celtic mythology woven together with a retelling of Swan Lake, and I was intrigued to see how it all played out. I’m not as familiar with either Celtic mythology or Swan Lake as I’d like to be, but hoped that this story would help me learn a bit more while offering a bit of entertainment.

The story had an interesting premise, and I love the trend towards romantasy when it’s done well. However, this one has a love triangle that works out to be more of a square, while is one of my least favorite tropes in a story. There’s an existing connection between Fia and Rogan, although Rogan is engaged to Fia’s sister. However, we don’t really get a great feel for Rogan, who comes off as kind of one-dimensional and flat with minimal depth. The romance with Irian feels a little more realistic, although it came across as a bit rushed, and more like lust than love. However, the romance was low-stakes, since the blurb basically already tells us how it is going to work out.

Fia has more personality to her character, and changes through the course of the story, but to be honest, I would have liked to see another POV in the book. It felt that limiting the perspective to that of Fia’s alone left the reader with minimal insight into the story, and that by adding another POV character, the author would have let the reader gain a better understanding of the world that they’re in and the story being told.

One of my biggest issues with this book was the pacing. It wasn’t consistent throughout the story, with long periods where there wasn’t much happening, then short periods of faster-paced action. Both Fia and Rogan are given missions to accomplish in Tír na nÓg, but they never expressed any urgency to do so, even though they have extremely limited time to spend there. 

Overall, this was an intriguing story, but it honestly felt like it was all a setup for the next book in the series. Not much happened here that wasn’t listed in the blurb, so nothing was overly surprising or shocking, and it contributed to the low-stakes feeling of the story. I would have loved to see some more exploration of the magic system, which I still don’t really understand, but this story is more of a romance than a fantasy. I’m hoping that the next book will be paced more consistently, allowing the characters to grow, and further exploring Celtic mythology.

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