The Overwood

Blue Jasper is back in the human world after his harrowing adventures in The Wherewood. Although he is happy to be back – especially with his new dog, Rosa – he is starting to worry that living in a cottage away from everywhere may not be safe for his family. Olea, the Faerie Queen, no longer has magic and has been banished somewhere in the human world, something which is good and bad: good because she won’t be able to hurt the twins when they are in Faerie; bad because she is probably going to try to get revenge on him and his family for their role in her banishment.

When Blue and the twins, Violet and Indigo, arrive home after doing some Christmas shopping, they find their house ransacked and their mother missing. It is clear that Olea has struck, but it is less clear what she wants. The only thing that Blue knows for sure is he must find her before the solstice or his mother will be killed. The first step in finding her is traveling to the other side of the country, by portal, to Toronto. Oren has sent friends Salix and Finola to help in the rescue mission.

Author Gabrielle Prendergast has gathered the full cast of the previous books in the “Faerie Woods” series for another adventure filled with magic, mystery, and mayhem. Prendergast uses this novel to answer some questions from the previous novels and to complete the narrative arc she started in The Crosswood. Although the author does provide some of the backstory at the beginning of The Overwood to remind the reader where to pick up the tale, the novel is not a stand-alone novel.

Prendergast continues to develop Blue’s character. In this novel, Blue expresses his frustration with the isolation of the off-the-grid lifestyle he believes his mother chose. He yearns for a phone, a laptop, and some of the amenities of city life.
Although I appreciated the individual characters, the pacing of The Overwood was awkward. The first third of the novel was slow as an overview of the previous books was provided as well as context for the conflict. The middle section bounced between various scenes without getting to the meat of the conflict, and the end was rushed. There seemed to be a lot of waiting for the bad guy to show up.

As a whole, the “Faerie Woods” series supplements the high-interest fantasy section nicely. This series had a lot of promise. The Overwood needs to follow Blue’s mom’s ideals with a little less filler and a little more protein.