Review: Faery Swap by Susan Kaye Quinn

Posted January 2, 2014 by Lola in Fantasy, Review / 2 Comments

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Faery Swap
by Susan Kaye Quinn

Blurb:
Warrior faery princes can be very stubborn.
Especially when they possess your body.

Fourteen-year-old Finn just wants to keep his little sister out of Child Protective Services—an epic challenge with their parentally-missing-in-action dad moving them to England, near the famous Stonehenge rocks.

Warrior faery Prince Zaneyr just wants to escape his father’s reckless plan to repair the Rift—a catastrophe that ripped the faery realm from Earth 4,000 years ago and set it adrift in an alternate, timeless dimension.

When Zaneyr tricks Finn into swapping places, Finn becomes a bodiless soul stuck in the Otherworld, fighting spriggans with sharp teeth and rival faery Houses. Back on Earth, Zaneyr uses Finn’s body to fight off his father’s seekers and keep the king’s greatest weapon—himself—out of his hands. Between them, they have two souls and only one body… and both worlds to save before the dimensional window between them slams shut.

Faery Swap is an action and druid-magic filled portal fantasy, told by both a runaway faery prince and the boy he’s tricked into taking his place.


This Prince and the Pauper meets Warrior Faeries tale is suitable for all ages.

My Review:
I got a copy in exchange for an honest review

Faery Swap is a fun and enjoyable story. I don’t read a lot of Middle Grade books, but books like this really make me wonder why I don’t read MG more often. It’s so different from YA and NA, it’s less drama and more epic adventures and a fun story.  Faery Swap is a great story about a human boy and a faery warrior prince who swap places and have to save the world (sort of) and stop the evil guy from carrying out his plans. It’s a bit cliché at some points, but also has some great original touches to it. Like the way magic worked, the importance of knowledge and magic and the Otherworld.

The focus of Faery Swap is mostly on the story. It’s told in third person perspective with chapters from Zaneyr and Finn his perspective. They swap early in the story and Finn has to figure out how the Otherworld works an how to get home, while Zaneyr has to figure out how to act normal in the human world, which leads to some hilarious situations. There are some precitable scenes, but there where also some plot twists I didn’t see coming. This story was a lot of fun and I read it in one day.

I liked both Finn and Zaneyr, although at first I thought Zaneyr was a bit annoying. He was running away from his problems, without solving them, but luckily he realized that later on. Finn was a nice guy who cares a lot about his family and takes on a lot of responsibility already. He cares for his little sister and makes sure they don’t end up in child protective services, because his father isn’t really there for them. I really felt bad for them, they basically didn’t have a mother and a father. Erin, Finn’s sister, is adorable and she was the cause of some great scenes in the book. I also liked Fix, the Spriggan, he talked about himself in a weird way and for some reason he was just adorable.

The world building is done well, giving enough information without overdoing it. I would’ve liked to learn more about the world, but I think this book has the right amount of world building for the audience. The things we need to know get explained and there are some great ideas of what the Otherworld is like and the different type of faeries and houses. I really liked the world Susan created in this book. The magic in this book is also kinda unique, it uses the elements, but there is also dimensional magic. And the more knowledge and mathematics you know the better your magic.

I also loved the fact how great the cover matches the story, it has Stonehenge, both main characters, the wands and on the back is even the Spriggan Fix and all these things play an important role in the book.
The ending wraps the story up nicely, providing with a good ending, while still leaving open the possibility for a sequel would the author ever want to write one. It wrapped up all the important storylines and it left me feeling happy about how things ended.

To conclude: This is a fun and enjoyable story. The story was a bit predictable at times, but it had enough original elements to keep it interesting and there where some plot twists I didn’t see coming. I liked the characters and the world building was done well, although I would’ve liked to learn even more about the world. All in all this was a fun and enjoyable story!

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You can add Faery Swap to your to-read list on Goodreads

You can buy Faery Swap here:
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2 responses to “Review: Faery Swap by Susan Kaye Quinn

    • I don’t read a lot of MG either, I usually prefer YA, NA and Adult, but if I do pick up a MG book once in a while I do tend to enjoy them. I usually only pick up MG if it’s an author I know from a different age category decides to write MG too, like David Estes his Nikki Powergloves series and kelley Armstrong her The Blackwell Pages series.

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